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Democratic-endorsed candidates appeared poised to hold onto a majority of seats on the Loudoun County School Board, according to early results from Tuesday’s election. One Republican-backed candidate and one independent were projected to win seats on the nine person board, and two races remained too close to call on election night, with provisional and post-election ballots still outstanding.
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All nine board seats were on the ballot Tuesday. The new board will be run overwhelmingly by newcomers.
While school board races in Virginia, as in most of the country, are nonpartisan, nearly all the candidates on the ballot Tuesday were endorsed by a local political party. In most races there were only two candidates: one endorsed by Republicans and one endorsed by Democrats.
Incumbents ran for reelection in the Ashburn District, which remained too close to call, and the Leesburg District, where independent candidate Lauren Shernoff was projected to unseat incumbent Erika Ogedegbe. Shernoff, who taught in Title I schools and worked as a literacy specialist, campaigned on a platform of removing political agendas from the board and focusing on student achievement.
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Democratic-endorsed Melinda Mansfield was projected to win in the Dulles district seat, where she ran unopposed.
In the Algonkian district, Democratic-backed April Moore Chandler was projected to defeat Republican-endorsed Viktoria Hunyadi. Moore Chandler, who works as the Algonkian District school board staff aide, told The Washington Post in a questionnaire submitted in September that she planned to focus on boosting communication with parents and staff and addressing learning loss.
Most races were competitive, with voters turning out for candidates on both sides. The race in the Ashburn District between incumbent Harris Mahedavi and corporate recruiter Deana Griffiths remained too close to call on Tuesday evening, as did the race in the Little River District between Democratic-backed Sumera Rashid, a dentist, and Republican-endorsed Joseph Smith, a former wrestling and softball coach.
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In the countywide race for the at-large seat, Democratic-endorsed Anne Donohue, a lawyer, was projected to win over Republican-backed Michael Rivera.
Democratic-backed Linda Deans was projected to win over Republican Chris Hodges in the race for the Broad Run district seat. Deans worked in schools in positions ranging from a science teacher to a principal.
But in the Catoctin district, retired educator Kari LaBell, who was endorsed by Republicans, was projected to beat out Megan Lockwood, her Democratic opponent. In the questionnaire, LaBell said her top priority on the board is restoring transparency by building better relationships with parents.
In the final seat, the Sterling District, Democratic-endorsed Arben Istrefi was projected to win over Republican-endorsed Amy Riccardi and independent Sarath Kolla. Istrefi, a chief operating officer at a tech company, told The Post in the questionnaire that he hopes to address learning loss and mental health as his top priorities.
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The Loudoun County School Board governs schools in the wealthy, diversifying D.C. suburb that serves more than 80,000 students. It’s the first significant school board race — with all nine seats on the ballot — since 2019.
In that time, the district faced pandemic shutdowns and became ground zero in the country’s education culture wars. The district faced fierce criticism from parent groups, cycled through three superintendents, battled with state leaders and witnessed numerous investigations. School board members faced online threats and recall petitions — leading one member to resign in 2021.
The board was under fire for its racial equity work the same year, drawing complaints from some parents who said the district was indoctrinating students with critical race theory. A teacher sued the school system after he was suspended for refusing to use transgender students’ pronouns. An infamous school board meeting ended in an arrest and began a years-long controversy over the district’s handling of two sexual assaults that were committed by one student at two different schools.
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In many ways, the district also became a model for conservatives. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) tapped into the strife and grievances he heard from parents in the district during his 2021 race for governor. He campaigned on restoring “parents’ rights,” to avoid situations like those playing out in Loudoun County. He vowed to investigate the sexual assaults that happened in the two high schools. The messaging in part worked. It helped lift him to victory in 2021 and became a playbook for Republican candidates around the country.
The parental frustration that stemmed from the pandemic was widespread in school boards across the commonwealth and country. In Spotsylvania, the divided school board regularly draws dozens of speakers who rail against library selections and yell at school board members. School boards have increasingly become an outlet for national politics to play out.
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Lauren Perel, 52, who works in communications, said positions on parents’ rights matter to her even though her children are grown. She worries adult themes are being taught to young students before they are ready to understand the subject matter.
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“I don’t like seeing parents taken out of the equation,” Perel said. “I don’t think government knows what’s best for our children.”
But for Gail Meyers, 74, a part-time consultant, what she sees happening in the state school system, including the demonization of critical race theory, helped drive her to the polls this year. She called it “disgraceful.”
“If you don’t acknowledge the past, you are doomed to repeat it,” she said.
Many of the candidates in the race understood the stakes of joining the board. On both sides of the aisle, candidates campaigned on restoring transparency and trust to the board. They talked about holding community forums and fostering better relationships with parents. But they recognized that the school board is also about education, and Loudoun faces many of the same key challenges of public schools around the country: staffing shortages, behavioral challenges, chronic absenteeism, learning loss and crises in mental health and with fentanyl.
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Michelle Moore, 77, couldn’t name the Democratic-endorsed candidates whom she supported for the Loudoun School Board after voting at Harper Rock Middle School in Leesburg.
But it didn’t quite matter. Both Anne Donohue, running in the at-large seat, and Harris Mahedavi, running in the Ashburn district, appeared on the Democratic sample ballot. And that was good enough for her — particularly with regards to what it meant for LGBTQ students.
“Anybody who is in that category — whether they’re an adult or a child — they should be treated like human beings.”
Democrats, she added, would make sure that was the case.
Greg Terry, a 49 year-old systems administrator, showed up to the polls in Leesburg with his wife and three children. He also voted for Donohue and Mahedavi, he said, to prevent more conservative candidates from keeping certain books out of school libraries.
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“How do you learn about different walks of life if you don’t allow people to be exposed to them?” he asked. “If you don’t want your child reading something, that’s for you to legislate in your house. But don’t take it away from other people.”
But many GOP voters interviewed at two polling places in Ashburn cited concerns about the school board’s handling of 2021 sexual assaults, about teaching of sex education, and about what they called school officials’ failures to notify parents that their students identified as trans or that students were experiencing drug overdoses.
“We just need a balance of power,” said Jane Mouritzen, 54, of Ashburn. “Right now, in Loudoun, it’s too much to the left.”
Teo Armus and Jenna Portnoy contributed to this report.
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