Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9308080053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
A long look at another list gave her the bad news. Nearly everybody with money had ties to someone from another locality. And her job - as a member of the campaign's fund-raising committee - was to wrest it away from them.
She didn't even know what they looked like.
"We're going to be like little buzzards tonight hunting those name tags," she cried.
Raise money. Design ads. Get out the vote.
Hoist your candidate onto the School Board. And do it before somebody from the religious right beats you to it.
So went the lessons on the first day of Elected School Board school at the Virginia Education Association's summer leadership conference. Anderson, a political action committee chairman from Pulaski County, jumped eagerly into her role in the simulated campaign.
It's one she might take on for real in 1995, when Pulaski elects its first school board.
But then again, she might not. Actively promoting a school board candidate could backfire if the candidate lost, Anderson said.
"We'd be stupid to alienate anyone."
Teachers would also be foolish to sit out the political game, the VEA leadership has been warning its members. They fear that others - namely the religious right - will be playing, and playing hard. And they don't want to forfeit.
"We'll all pay if Pat [Robertson] and Jerry [Falwell] get their friends on our school boards," VEA President Rob Jones told his membership during its annual convention in April.
Last week, the teachers' union provided the training they would need to keep them off.
Interwoven throughout lessons on fund raising and campaign advertising came advice on how to identify candidates conducting "stealth" campaigns with hidden religious agendas and how to campaign against them.
It's advice Christian conservatives say is unnecessary.
"I guess I would say that the VEA has been overreacting somewhat," Falwell spokesman Mark DeMoss said.
"Rev. Falwell is not actively engaged anywhere in the country training people to run for school boards," he said. "Although he would be quick to encourage Christians anywhere to become involved where they live at every level."
The Christian Coalition does provide training to potential candidates, spokesman Mike Russell said. But it tells them not to hide their faith-based agendas.
"If you decide to run, be upfront," the Coalition advises at its leadership schools, Russell said.
Neither the Coalition, founded by television evangelist Pat Robertson, nor Falwell can endorse political candidates. But the Coalition does distribute millions of "voter guides" that identify candidates running on "pro-family" platforms.
A "pro-family" agenda, Russell said, includes voluntary prayer in schools, "back-to-basics" curriculums (in contrast to outcome-based curriculum reform), and abstinence-emphasizing texts for sex education such as "Teen Aid" and "Sex Respect," which have been challenged as medically inaccurate and pervasively religious.
Jones said the VEA doesn't object to Christian conservatives holding school board seats as long as they leave their religion at home.
Public schools "can't be the conduit for religious values," he said. "We have to be religion neutral."
The VEA also has to be prepared, he said.
"Regardless of what their folks are doing, we'd be lined up to get friends of education elected," he said.
Hence the inclusion, for the first time, of an elected-school board school in the VEA's three-day summer leadership conference. The schools will likely continue for several years as localities around the state begin electing school board members, Jones said.
Cities begin electing school boards next May; counties that have passed referendums will elect members in November 1995.
Anderson and other regional delegates said they were less concerned about the threat of the religious right than the challenge of learning to run a campaign. Conservative Christians, they said, have not yet expressed interest in running for school boards in this area.
Debbie McClure, president of the Roanoke County Education Association, signed up for the elected-school board seminar for one reason.
"Because it's coming to us," she said. Vinton District Supervisor Harry Nickens "has seen to that."
Nickens led a successful campaign this summer to place the elected school board option on the November ballot. Roanoke County voters will also have the option of voting to allow the Board of Supervisors to appoint school board members in a separate referendum.
The RCEA never took a position on elected school boards, McClure said, because its membership was divided over the issue. But now it must learn to adapt.
In Roanoke County, that may mean recruiting a new slate of candidates, since many on the current board say they will not run if the fall referendum passes.
The VEA may also be looking for candidates in Bedford, Botetourt, Craig, Floyd and Montgomery counties. Craig and Pulaski counties passed the elected school board option last year. The others will vote on the issue this fall.
Anderson said she hopes she can persuade those on Pulaski's School Board to remain.
"If we could persuade the people that are already on our School Board to run, I think we'd be very fortunate," she said.
But if they can't, Anderson's ready. Her group managed to get the majority of the "Fatcat" money - fake dollars doled out secretly to a handful of VEA members to make the game interesting. More important, her candidate won.
"It's an exciting time," she said.
by CNB