by Kerry Dougherty
In the aftermath of the midterms there is gnashing of teeth among Republican voters who wanted a red wave.
But, hey, we did our part in southeastern Virginia. We flipped the 2nd District congressional seat and some of the woke Virginia Beach School Board.
Well done, neighbors!
On Tuesday I met Mike Callan in the parking lot of my polling place at Galilee Church. He was running for the District 6 seat on the Virginia Beach School Board.
We chatted about the importance of school board elections and agreed that the city was in desperate need of new board members. Representatives who would be responsive to parents and who would raise the academic bar instead of lowering it.
“I think school board elections are more important than Congress,” I said.
“More important than president, in some ways,” Callan said.
After all, he added, school board decisions directly impact our precious children.
If COVID did anything, it focused attention on America’s public schools and the union-worshipping officials who run them.
Fact: from the earliest days of the pandemic it was clear that kids were at little risk of serious illness from COVID. Yet governors were quick to close schools and slow to allow them to reopen.
Once schools could open, many didn’t. Those were in districts — like Virginia Beach — where the school boards slavishly followed the dictates of teachers’ unions that were determined to keep schools shuttered as long as possible.
Parents pleaded for a return to normalcy. Union puppets on school boards sneered at them.
When these schools finally did reopen they required children to stay far from their classmates and forced the youngsters to wear masks.
Shoot, Randi Weingarten’s AFT colluded with the CDC to draw up school safety guidelines that made it impossible for schools to operate.
By the time students were back at their desks and the masks were off many kids had fallen hopelessly behind. Test scores plummeted.
Now all but the most strident labor union loyalists admit that school closures were a catastrophic mistake.
Out of this calamity, the Students First PAC was born. A non-partisan collection of concerned Beach parents and grandparents who raised money, recruited a first-rate slate of candidates and went to work trying to flip the Beach board.
“If we can get four of our six candidates elected, that would be a success,” School Board member Vicky Manning told me.
While the vote totals in Virginia Beach aren’t final, it appears that four WERE victorious. Including Callan.
David Culpepper, a retired Navy captain and TopGun instructor, toppled the current chair of the Board. Kathleen Brown seems to be victorious in District 10 and Carolyn Weems, the only incumbent endorsed by Students First, retained her seat.
With six of 11 seats in the hands of parent- and student-oriented school board members, look for big changes.
Everyone in the country knows that Democrat Elaine Luria lost the 2nd District seat in Congress to Republican Jen Kiggans.
The winning formula there? Kiggans was optimistic and forward looking. Luria kept her eyes on the rear-view, January 6th and, of course, abortion.
Looks like there were several big changes on the Virginia Beach City Council. More on what happened there next week, after the numbers are final.
In the meantime, rest easy. The people voted. They spoke. Change is on its way!
This column has been republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.
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