Alamance-Burlington school board members will likely discuss how to go about filling the vacancy left by school board member Chuck Marsh, who announced his resignation Monday night, at their next meeting in two weeks (see related story, this edition).
While backchannel discussions about who should be chosen to serve the remaining 21 months of Marsh’s term on the school board are already in full swing, a clear choice has yet to emerge.
The last time a school board member resigned – when four-term board member Patsy Simpson stepped down in April 2023, about 1½ years prior to the end of her term – it took seven months to appoint a replacement.
State law requires school board members who are elected on a nonpartisan basis, which includes ABSS board members, to appoint a replacement to fill a vacancy. Neither the Democratic nor the Republic Party has any role in selecting a replacement member of a nonpartisan board, according to the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
School board members can have one of two methods by which to fill a vacancy on a nonpartisan board: they can introduce a motion to appoint someone and to fill the vacancy with whoever receives a majority of votes; or they can nominate and vote by a written ballot.
State law requires all discussion and votes to be conducted in an open meeting. Even if board members were to record their votes on written ballots, their votes must be announced publicly, and each ballot becomes a public record.
One seemingly obvious choice to complete the remainder of Marsh’s term would be Corrie Shepherd, who came in fifth among eight candidates for four seats on the nonpartisan school board in the November 2024 general election.
That line of reasoning was frequently voiced by speakers who lobbied the school board in 2023 to appoint Seneca Rogers, a reimbursement analyst for Labcorp, to complete Simpson’s term after she resigned in April 2023 to move to Virginia. (Another reason that Rogers’ supporters cited prior to his appointment on November 14, 2023 was the belief that a minority should replace Simpson, the board’s only black member.)
Rogers had been a runner-up in two previous school board races. In November 2022, he placed fourth for three open seats, behind Marsh and current board members Dan Ingle and Dr. Charles Parker elected.
In November 2020, Rogers came in fifth for four open seats on the school board.
School board members selected Rogers – over 12 other applicants for the vacancy – voting 5-1 in November 2023 to appoint him to serve the remaining 12½ months of Simpson’s term.
Ryan Bowden, who didn’t seek reelection to a second term on the school board last year, cast the lone vote against appointing Rogers, insisting that “the most nonpartisan thing we can do is not appoint” a replacement for Simpson and instead leave the seat open until the seat appeared on the ballot in 2024 general election.
Corrie Shepherd
Despite her strong showing as a first-time candidate in the November 2024, Shepherd insisted Wednesday in an interview with The Alamance News that she isn’t interested in completing the unexpired portion of Marsh’s term, which runs through early December 2026.
Among other concerns, Shepherd said she would be politically ostracized for beliefs about public education, as outlined in her responses to an Alamance News issues questionnaire prior to last year’s school board race.
An accountant who is currently employed as an operations manager for the North Carolina Values Coalition, Shepherd thinks her positions on public education tend to run counter to those of most school board members, including those who currently serve on the school board.
For example, she has previously attributed weak academic performance not to a lack of sufficient funding but to a “lack of critical thinking skills,” based on her responses to the newspaper’s issues questionnaire for the 2024 school board race. Shepherd has also said she supports charter and private schools as an option for students whose needs aren’t fully met by traditional public schools, as well as the state-funded “Opportunity Scholarships” to offset private school tuition for K-12 students.
By comparison, ABSS school board members and many of their counterparts across the state’s 115 public school systems tend to hold a common position, claiming that charter and private schools siphon taxpayer funds but aren’t required to meet the same hiring and academic performance standards that traditional public schools are.
Last fall, Shepherd also publicly criticized the school board’s August 2024 adoption of the federal expansion of Title IX under former President Joe Biden to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity; that provision is currently suspended under an executive order that President Donald Trump issued on January 20.
“I could try my best to get [other school board members] to address some things, or I could just go up there like they do and ignore that the building’s on fire and talk about the good things,” Shepherd told the newspaper Wednesday. “I think both of those things are a waste of my time.
“Their response to me in recent weeks about Title IX – that they’re going to wait for guidance from the state – tells me they’re guided by the bureaucracy in education,” Shepherd elaborated. “They never talk about curriculum; they do what the administration tells them. They’re putting a united front on everything…. The only problem they see is that they don’t have enough money; they’re in complete denial [about systemic problems in public education].”
Peter Morcombe
Peter Morcombe, the sixth-highest vote-getter in the November 2024 school board race, also appears to have ruled out any interest in completing the unexpired portion of Marsh’s term.
“NO, goodness no,” Morcombe’s wife, Ines Morcombe, interjected during a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.
A retired engineer and manager for a physics laboratory at Duke University who also founded six public charter schools in Alamance, Durham, and Orange counties, the octogenarian instead lobbied for Shepherd to be appointed to the vacant school board seat.
“I don’t think I’d be as impressive on the board as Corrie would be,” said Morcombe, who turned 87 in December. “I’m a little bit over the hill now.”
“I think she’d be terrific because she wants to raise the standards, student achievement,” Morcombe added.
Donna Westbrooks
Former school board member and retired ABSS administrator Donna Westbrooks, who came in seventh in her bid for reelection to a second term on the school board in November 2024, said Tuesday afternoon that she believes she would be ineligible to fill the vacancy because she’s currently employed as a part-time testing coordinator at Western High School.
“I have made a commitment to do that for the remainder of the year,” Westbrooks said in an interview. “I think the interest is there, but I think that based on the community and the way the votes went [in November], they spoke. I changed to unaffiliated, and I think that hurt me. I hated that I wasn’t coming back because I really enjoy advocating for kids because that’s what I’ve done for my entire life – my career. This is a way that I can do that now; I did testing when I was assistant principal, and I’m good with that.”
Read the newspaper’s editorial page opinion on how the seat should be filled: https://alamancenews.com/school-board-choice-is-obvious/
