GOP leader vows to force school board's hand

Guy Lucas, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·2 min read

Feb. 8—GUILFORD COUNTY — If the Democratic majority on the Guilford County Board of Education keeps voting down the Republican Party's preferred candidate for a vacant board seat, Republicans in the General Assembly will force the issue, the party's Guilford County chairman warned Tuesday night.

Speaking shortly before the board's vote on filling the District 3 seat, Guilford County GOP Chairman David Gleeson told the board members that state Rep. John Hardister, R-Guilford, who is part of the House leadership, is prepared to introduce legislation to change the ambiguous language that the board has relied on to reject Michael Logan. Tuesday's 5-2 vote against Logan was the third time Logan garnered no Democratic votes.

The vacancy was created when Pat Tillman was elected in November to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, and the Republican Party nominated Logan, an educator, to fill Tillman's seat, which represents northeastern Guilford County.

However, while state law says the board must consider the party's nomination, it then says the board must vote on the nomination. School board attorney Jill Wilson says the fact that the law says the board must vote, not that the board must approve or must appoint, gives the board the option of rejecting the party's nominee.

Gleeson told the board before the vote, "We have asked (the General Assembly) for the statute to be corrected and the language cleaned up."

In other business, the school board approved an academic calendar for the 2023-24 school year that sets the first day of classes for schools on a traditional calendar as Aug. 28 and the last as June 7.

Superintendent Whitney Oakley said the majority of parents who submitted comments on the two calendar options that were considered preferred an option that ended classes on June 12 because they wanted a full two weeks for the winter holiday break.

The calendar that the board approved sets the winter break as running from Friday, Dec. 22, through Tuesday, Jan. 2.

The board also approved calendars for the following two school years with the same length of winter break.

The board also approved naming High Point Central High School's baseball field for former coach Andrew T. Harper and altering the formal name of The Kearns Academy.

Andy Harper was the head baseball coach at Central for seven seasons before his death in 2021 at age 48. The Bison had their ups and downs as one of the smallest 4A schools in the state, but Harper took the team to the 4A playoffs in 2017.

The name change will take effect in time for the school's first home game on March 3.

The formal name of Kearns had been The Kearns Academy at High Point Central because it originally was housed on Central's campus. The change approved by the board drops "at High Point Central" from the name.