Three out of four Republican challengers come out on top in Wichita school board races

Three out of four Republican challengers who ran together as a slate of candidates for election to the Wichita Board of Education topped incumbents in Kansas’ largest school district.

The election was technically nonpartisan, meaning party affiliation did not appear on the ballot, but the campaigns were a highly partisan affair.

“People wanted to see change, and they got it,” said Kathy Bond, who prevailed in District 5 with 53% of the vote to incumbent Mia Turner’s 46%. Turner was appointed earlier this year to replace Mike Rodee, who resigned.

The largest margin of victory was in District 6, where challenger Hazel Stabler prevailed with 44% of the vote to Ron Rosales’ almost 30% and Holly Terrill’s nearly 26%.

In District 1, Diane Albert defeated incumbent Ben Blankley by 13 percentage points, 56% to 43%.

The victory for Republicans sets up a potential battle over masks and vaccinations in schools but falls short of giving the ticket a majority on the seven-member board. The Wichita public schools district has about 47,000 students, nearly 10,000 employees and an operating budget around $837.2 million.

The challengers have promised a change in direction of COVID-19 public health policy in the district; incumbents have promised a more measured approach.

Julie Hedrick, the only incumbent to win on Tuesday, said she is willing to work with the newcomers to the board.

“I know a lot about how the district operates, and I’m very open and willing to work with anybody and everybody that’s there to serve kids,” she said. “I’m definitely just all about the kids.”

Hedrick, of District 2, defeated Brent Davis, who came under fire during the campaign after he proposed using the district’s schoolchildren as test subjects in an experiment that would separate students into masked and unmasked groups and then study their rates of COVID infection.

Hedrick won by 5 percentage points.

Winners won’t take office until Jan. 10, but school board members could soon face a decision surrounding vaccines in schools. On Tuesday, advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unanimously endorsed the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use in elementary-school-aged children, ages 5 to 10.

Incumbents Blankley, Hedrick, Turner and Rosales ran on their experience as leaders through the COVID-19 pandemic, when decisions by the Kansas Legislature and the Sedgwick County Commission forced school boards to take the lead on public health decisions for students and employees in their districts.

The district has been under a mask mandate for nearly the entire school year.

The Sedgwick County Republican Party recruited and supported a block of four — Albert, Davis, Bond and Stabler — part of a nationwide Republican effort to mobilize voters around national wedge issues such as mask mandates, mandatory vaccination and critical race theory.

Democratic Party groups recently began promoting their own slate: Blankley, Hedrick, Turner and political newcomer Holly Terrill.

Rosales, an incumbent, lost favor with many Democrats when he opposed a statement of nondiscrimination protecting gay, transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

“I always knew it could go either way, and I have a lot of respect for the incumbent,” Stabler said. “He’s a really nice person.”

Stabler said she plans to learn what she can before going on the board in January, “then we’ll dig in.”

“I’m looking forward to working with all of the board members and being a team player. I know we can’t agree on everything . . . but I’m a good listener, and I will do whatever I have to do to be a good board member.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 11:53 PM.