Board of Education Chooses New Leader

The Board of Education’s new conservative majority broke with custom this week and elected Bob Harden president of the five-member panel and Terry Cantrell its vice president.

Incumbent member and vice president Lynn Hamtil had been in line to take the president’s spot, as has been the board’s practice in the past.

Incumbents Harden and Cantrell, along with newly elected member Linda Paulsen, share views on a number of issues. Paulsen ran on a ticket promoting back-to-basics education and increased parental participation in classrooms. She was endorsed by Harden and Cantrell.

All three of the board members were endorsed by the Education Alliance, a conservative group that supports back-to-basics education, local control and parental rights while opposing teachers unions, federal funding and bilingual education.

Hamtil, who is beginning her fifth term on the board, said that, though the president’s chair is ceremonial rather than political, board members up to now have had a tacit agreement to rotate into the spot.

“We have moved around because we each have a constituency,” she said, adding that rotating leadership “avoids dissent and conflict.”