* See update at the bottom of this post.
Do any of y’all watch Naked and Afraid on the Discovery Channel? I’m not a fan of reality TV, but for some reason, I can’t stop watching it. This show has it all – the drama, the suspense, the survivalist skills, and… well… the nakedness. There’s something addictive about chowing down on tortilla chips on my couch while watching people with blurred genitals argue while eating bugs and vermin on TV.
It’s kind of like the day campaign finance reports are filed. Donations, contributions, and expenditures are laid bare for all to see, propagated in Facebook groups and other cesspools of the social media landscape. The minute some poor schmuck – who undoubtedly ended up doing all the work in college group projects – does the math, the accusations, conspiracy theories, and name-calling begin. The battle to survive is intense. People argue passionately, defending their candidates while working hard to make the case that other candidates are corrupt, compromised, or sell-outs.
I have so many questions today. There is a lot of cash flowing into BOE campaigns right now. Are folks really that big on local BOE elections? Why do some candidates have well north of $20k in receipts while others have less than a thousand? Why on earth would a single household in Clarksville be blowing several grand on candidates in districts they don’t even live in? For what is arguably one of the lowest levels of elected office?
I’ll tell you why. (Cue Darth Vader music.) Redistricting!
Clarksville resident Sheridan Phillips contributed $4,100 to four anti-redistricting candidates in districts 2 (Larry Pretlow), 3 (Gian Alfeo), 4 (Sezin Palmer), and 5 (Saif Rehman). Dr. Phillips, who does not have students in HCPSS, was not happy to find out last fall that her high-dollar home may be reassigned from River Hill High School to Wilde Lake High School. Fortunately for her, the crisis was averted, as all of the RHHS to WLHS moves were thrown out in the finalized plan.
District 5 resident Timothy Dull contributed well over $3,000 to anti-redistricting candidates in districts 1 (Christina “DeVos” Small), 2 (Larry Pretlow), 4 (Sezin Palmer), and 5 (Saif Rehman). Mr. Dull submitted written testimony against last fall’s redistricting, and apparently he is a fan of the “Improve, Don’t Move” line of thinking.
The Chinese American Parent Association of Howard County (CAPA) endorsed and donated $3,000 each to two anti-redistricting candidates in districts 1 (Christina “DeVos” Small) and 4 (Sezin Palmer). It’s worth noting that these districts happen to contain Centennial High School and River Hill High School (respectively), two of the most sought-after high schools in the county. I doubt that’s a coincidence.
Anti-redistricting candidate and River Hill resident Sezin Palmer in D4 received over $10,000 in contributions from Howard County districts other than her own, including District 5 residents whose neighborhoods are assigned to the River Hill/Clarksville set of schools.
Most mysterious of all is the whopping $5,000 a gentleman named Thomas Harriman of California contributed to anti-redistricting candidates in districts 2 (Larry Pretlow), 3 (Gian Alfeo), 4 (Sezin Palmer), and 5 (Yun Lu and Saif Rehman). It is unclear who this man is*, what his interest is in Howard County BOE races, or why he would contribute that much money to a set of candidates who all have one thing in common. However, his California Bar profile shows him living at the same address as Sheridan Phillips. Why is so much money coming from this one home?
We’ve long known that money makes the world go ’round. And we’ve long known that residents in Howard County like to pay artificially high prices for homes assigned to certain schools, and they are very afraid of losing the schools that they “paid for.” The candidates receiving such high-dollar donations all have one thing in common: they are single-issue candidates running on anti-redistricting sentiment. That’s it. Clearly, Howard County’s deeper pockets want to keep their property values artificially high, so they are backing the anti-redistricting candidates with everything they’ve got.
We all need to remember that the Board of Education is responsible for so much more than boundary assignments. Its responsibilities are vast and do not include property values. Ask these anti-redistricting candidates how they plan to close the achievement gap and reduce the negative effects of the concentration of poverty in our schools. I guarantee you won’t get more than a vague prevarication.
Vote for the candidates who may not have the most money, but who have the best qualifications to oversee a $1B organization that serves all of its 59,000 students – not just the more affluent ones.
* Update: Sheridan Phillips clarified publicly on Scott Ewart’s blog that Mr. Harriman is her father-in-law and that their motive was, indeed, anti-redistricting.
