WATAUGA COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
NOTE: You may vote for up to three. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot. While the Watauga Board of Education races are “non-partisan,” I provide Party affiliation for all candidates. I believe informed voters know the party affiliation of all candidates.
Reason for my Endorsements: I sent a questionnaire to all school Board candidates for this year’s primary election and have copied my candidate discussions from that primary below, updating based on any new information since that time. You can read my reasons for my primary endorsements for the Board of Education HERE. I encourage you to read the candidates’ individual responses to the Pam’s Picks Questionnaire, presented in full and unedited (just follow the links below). Even those I don’t always agree with all but one were mostly solid candidates. As always, I have endorsed those candidates who most reflect my progressive bent.
Adam Hege (Democrat)
https://www.facebook.com/adam.hege.9/about
Read Hege’s full and unedited responses to the Pam’s Picks Questionnaire HERE.
Hege lives in Boone with his wife and daughter. He joined the faculty at AppState’s Beaver College of Health Sciences as a specialist in public health and exercise science. (He’s a runner.) He has a doctorate in public health from UNC-G, with additional training in public administration from AppState.
Hege specializes in public health policy with special expertise in occupational/worksite health and safety, health disparities among rural communities, and food insecurity in rural North Carolina.
Hege’s Pam’s Picks questionnaire responses indicate a strong supporter of all levels of public education. “I’m a progressive candidate, and through my lived experiences, I’ve continued to value the importance of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, compassion, character, diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Hege believes the most pressing issue facing public schools statewide Is“inadequate funding” and “undervaluing.” He says the biggest challenge for Watauga County Schools is the ability to recruit and retain high quality teachers, administrators, and staff: “The pay for these hardworking and dedicated professionals is not sufficient and with the ever-growing cost of housing in our community, it is not sustainable.”
Hege believes the Watauga County Board of Commissioners provides adequate funding for the county’s public schools and that the Board has recognized the renovation needs of several area schools. But he believes the state has fallen short in adequate funding: “Specifically, in 2022 we were rated last (50th) in the U.S. for state funding directed at K-12 public schools (Education Law Center); according to the North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile, from 2008 to 2020, NC’s funding levels decreased by approximately 10% when adjusted for inflation (NC Public Schools Statistical Profile).”
If he could increase school spending in only one area, Hege says it would be in school-based support services, and adds that mental illness is a major public health issue in our area.
Hege supports “some” of the ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ enacted for public schools by the state legislature last year. He notes that Watauga County schools “were already doing much of what is included in SB 49” but that “I am wholeheartedly against are elements of the bill that essentially seek to police students and their parents/families (and educators) regarding issues related to gender identity, sexual activity, and sexuality.… I’m definitely not a supporter of banning books.”
Nor does Hege support the “Moms for Liberty” organization: “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” I don’t equate “Mom’s for Liberty” as pursuing that goal.“
As a school board member, Hege would welcome opportunities to meet with parents, teachers and staff routinely. “I would welcome the opportunity to hold town halls at schools throughout the academic year and/or meet and greet with groups in the community.”
Alison Carroll Idol (Republican)
https://www.facebook.com/alison.idol
Read Idol’s full and unedited responses to the Pam’s Picks Questionnaire HERE.
Idol is a graduate of Watauga County Schools (1988) and Appalachian State University with a degree in Communications (1992). She is a mother of three grown children who all graduated from Watauga County Schools and is now a grandmother.
Idol’s Facebook page reveals a lovely and lively woman who is community-minded and volunteer-prone and who has been a “Mom” cheerleader for Watauga County Schools and a Substitute and Volunteer who has also worked with Samaritan’s Purse U.S. Disaster Relief. Her page also reveals her interest and support of The Hope Center of Boone which offers “counseling” on pregnancies but strongly discourages abortion and emergency contraception options.
In her Pam’s Picks questionnaire responses, Idol says she has a broad perspective into the local school system as a whole and has “stayed committed to supporting their schools, teachers and staff.” She also notes her service in the Parkway School PTO, with Friends of WHS, and her six years on the Watauga Education Foundation Board.
Idol believes the most pressing issue facing Watauga County Schools is aging school facilities, with a lack of air conditioning and overcrowding. She believes the Watauga County Board of Commissioners works hard to provide adequate school funding: “I have never known the commissioners to deny the school system any imminent needs.”
If Idol could increase spending in one area of our schools alone, it would be for facilities, specifically to build a middle school. She believes a middle school concept would “relieve some of the overcrowding in several K-8 schools and give our middle schoolers a larger variety of experiences and opportunities to not only better prepare them for social and extracurricular elements as they head towards high school, but to also increase the academic rigor.”
Idol supports passage of the ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ enacted for public schools by the state legislature in August 2023 She believes “parents should be responsible for and advocate for their child’s best interest and additionally I believe it protects teachers and staff.” Idol does not support nor oppose “Moms for Liberty,” claiming that both supporters and opponents of the organization are extreme: “… it was organized during the height of the Covid pandemic and considered extremist by a lot of outside organizations. My question is this- isn’t every mother a bit of an extremist when it comes to protecting and educating their children?”
Idol sings the praises of the Watauga School’s partnerships with companies such as Blue Ridge Electric, Appalachian State University, and Walmart, which provide grants and scholarships for students and teachers. She would like to see academic advising for high school students: “Partnerships, with local businesses, for instance, could have a huge impact for kids who want a career right out of high school. These relationships would also increase community engagement with our schools.”
Charlotte Mizelle Lloyd (Democrat)
https://www.facebook.com/charlotte.mizelle
Read Lloyd’s full and unedited responses to the Pam’s Picks Questionnaire HERE.
Lloyd graduated from Old Dominion University in Medical Technology. Her work career was in healthcare, including some college level teaching in Laboratory Medicine programs. This work included managing a large staff and budgets exceeding $25 million and many large and small capital projects.
After Lloyd retired as Administrative Director of Laboratory Services for Nash Healthcare Systems, she moved to Boone. She and her (now deceased) husband, Wayne, had six children and 11 grandchildren. Lloyd won a seat on Boone Town Council in 2015 and served one term and has now remarried.
Lloyd has been very active in the community, working as a Guardian ad Litem, as a member of the Grants Committee of the Women’s Fund of the Blue Ridge, as Vice President of the Democratic Women’s Club and as Treasurer for the Gardenettes Garden Club.
Lloyd cites raising her children in the public school systems, her Guardian ad Litem work with the North Carolina Court system, and her career in healthcare as giving her “insight into problems that children face when they are in troubled homes filled with violence, neglect, poverty, drugs and alcohol.” She wants to bring those experiences and perspectives into working with Watauga’s public schools.
Lloyd says one of her key platform issues is related to recruiting and keeping teachers in Watauga due to the area’s high cost of housing: “Teachers still want to teach up here because it is one of the best systems in the state. But they are struggling to find appropriate housing at an affordable price.” Like Hege, Lloyd points to North Carolina’s drop from 26th to 45th in teacher pay in the United States: “It is short sighted to skimp on teacher and staff salaries! This is especially true after the isolation of the Covid Pandemic and on-line learning.”
Lloyd did not directly answer whether she thought the County provided enough funding for local schools but did note that some school buildings are in need of renovation: “This is something I will want to look into more thoroughly to see what else can be done to help from all our resource possibilities.”
Lloyd would champion teacher pay or housing subsidies as her major concern. She also wants to provide more opportunity for Watauga high school graduates who do not go on to college: “I have a special heart for vocational technical education programs for kids who are not college bound. We need to educate electricians, auto mechanics, plumbers, etc. who can go to work after graduation with real skills and knowledge of their chosen trade.”
Lloyd seems to support the ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ enacted for public schools by the state legislature in August 2023 because “it is set to make sure that parents have access to a huge amount of information regarding their children and the running of our schools.” She does not support the “Moms for Liberty” organization: “We aren’t running a religious or church school, but rather a public school where we have to treat all students with dignity and fairness. Our students come from many religions or no religion at all. They come from multiple ethnic backgrounds and from all over the United States. So, I wouldn’t want to lend a lot of support to any one group who want to restrict teaching factual history of our country or of the world, factual science, etc.”
As for increasing public participation in schools, Lloyd would poll parents for ways they would prefer to get notices of our meetings and talk to other school systems to see what they have done to entice more parental participation.
Tom Ross (Republican)
No social media found.
Read Ross’ full and unedited responses to the Pam’s Picks Questionnaire HERE.
Cannot find a photograph. Sorry.
According to Ross’ answers in the Pam’s Picks questionnaire, he has spent over “30 years working in universities witnessing the declining performance of students.” He attributes the problem to “a lack of discipline and effort, the unwillingness to consider opposing viewpoints, and academic dishonesty.”
With a background and skills in economics, accounting, finance and performance improvement, Ross believes he can look for and skillfully assess effective programs and eliminate ineffective ones: “Too many education programs have promised much and delivered little, if elected I will seek to eliminate low value programs and reallocate these resources to more fruitful areas.”
Ross maintains the biggest challenge for Watauga and other school systems is to restore respect for education, “that is, demonstrating the value of knowledge and skills to a student’s life.” This is turn reduces student effort and satisfaction: “Educators must do a better job of demonstrating to students and parents how education is essential to our future goals and the monetary and non-monetary returns students will obtain from their educational efforts.”
Ross would not weigh in on whether the Watauga Board of Commissioners provides adequate funding for Watauga County’s public schools without first conducting a comprehensive study based on“access to financial records, a review of programs and their associated costs, and benchmarking to similar school districts.”
Ross fleshed out why he would increase teachers’ salaries and increase the number of school days: “I would seek to make Watauga County first in the state in education and one step toward this goal would be providing more than the minimum state required school days. I would advocate for an additional week of schooling and thus a 2.8% increase in teachers’ salaries in addition to any cost-of-living and merit increases.”
Ross did not weigh in on whether he supported the ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ enacted for public schools by the state legislature in August 2023. He does support the “Moms for Liberty” organization because it “seeks to defend parental rights from government overreach including the documented attempts by school boards to silence parents they disagree with…. I support anyone pursuing the fundamental values of the United States which I see are liberty, justice, and tolerance.”
Ross would increase public participation in Watauga Schools by ensuring that parents’ concerns get a fair hearing, and eliciting parental input, and welcoming parental participation in developing school curriculum and policies: “We cannot expect participation from groups that we shun, we need only look at the decline in public school enrollment and increase in private school enrollment in other counties to see the result of parochial decision-making and actions.”
During the candidate forum (video above). Ross endorses fellow Board of Education candidates Cole and Idol and Michele Morrow for NC Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Marshall Ashcraft (Democrat)
No social media found
Ashcraft is currently serving on the Board of Education (since 2020) and is seeking re-election. His daughter was a student in Watauga County schools (now graduated), and Ashcraft has been a long time Public Information Director for the Watauga County Schools. After retirement heran for and won a seat on Boone Town Council in 2017, then ran for Watauga County School Board in 2020, won reelection in 2022, and is running again for reelection.
Before working for the school system, Ashcraft served as Executive Director for the Children’s Council of Watauga County, where he “gained a deeper understanding of the importance of early childhood education for helping children reach their full potential.”
Ashcraft lists as the top item he would like to work on if re-elected as “strengthening our ability to recruit and retain the highest quality personnel for our schools…. …the pipeline of new teachers has thinned substantially in recent years, a development that threatens our ability to maintain the excellent teaching personnel we currently enjoy.” He would also like to increase ways to “sharpen our ability to compete for the best available candidates through early recruitment of new graduates and swift offers to high quality applicants”and to help identify affordable housing options to new hires. He believes the NC General Assembly should be doing more to help with a variety of challenges.
Ashcraft supports “most” of the ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ enacted for public schools by the state legislature last year. “However, it seems to me that it was created more as a political vehicle than to address any real issues in public education, that it created more heat than light in some respects, and that parts of it are based on faulty assumptions about how local schools operate and what parents and students need.”
Ashcraft refused to weigh in on his support or opposition for the “Moms for Liberty” organization; “However, as a general principle, we should focus our attention on the students, parents, and school personnel here in Watauga County, not on the agendas or activities of organizations and individuals with no stake in the Watauga County Schools.”
In spite of refusing to take a bite at the question above, in an “Appalachian Online” interview in 2022, Ashcraft expressed problems in trying to dictate reading from a political platform: “There is an opportunity for parents to have a voice. We do not want the Board of Education to be an institution that dictates what students are learning or reading.”
Ashcraft notes many opportunities for parents and others to become involved with local schools. Nonetheless, he believes the biggest obstacles to greater participation are parents’ work schedules and other competing life demands.
Chad Cole (Republican)
https://www.facebook.com/chadcole4boe/
Read Cole’s full and unedited responses to the Pam’s Picks Questionnaire HERE.
Cole is a native of Watauga County and is married with three children. He is a 2000 graduate of Watauga High School and has served 25 Years of service as a firefighter and EMT, is a supporter of FFA and 4H, and is a trade skills advocate. Cole ran for School Board in 2022 and finished a strong 4th.
Cole notes that he is one of only two candidates (Hege is the other) with children currently in the local school system, getting “to see firsthand the struggles, stresses and drama (yes drama) that some of our children face.” Unlike many past generations, Cole says parents having to work long hours, sometimes with multiple jobs, “are too exhausted to know what our children are doing for 7-10 hours a day at school.” He also notes a life experience that influenced him over the years is that he was bullied as a child: “Even as a young adult, I found I got pushed around and that has made me a stronger adult. Now, I take a strong stand against those who prey on the weak.”
When asked what he considered the most pressing issue for Watauga Schools, Cole said that Watauga schools are a model system statewide and we have to work to keep it that way. He wants to retain as part of the budget Watauga’s school nurses and resource officers, who are often funded instead by grants that are not always guaranteed. He also believes a focus on health and security should be a high priority.
Cole believes the School Board and the County Commissioners work well together. He cites success in building a new high school, providing upgrades and renovations where needed, and building the new Valle Crucis School. He wants to see future projects in addressing “a new Hardin Park school, major renovations/additions to Parkway, as well as roof repairs for other schools.”
Cole offers a wish list of key targets for increased budget considerations: educator salary increases, free breakfast and lunches, school sponsored field trips, fully funded nurses and SRO’s, adding equipment in trades classes, full time receptionists at every school, and more funding for athletics.
Cole supports the ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ enacted for public schools by the state legislature last year. He believes it allows parents more say so: “I feel like this will help bring parents and teachers closer together too. There is a great divide currently between the two, with little communication between them… We need to get back to having open lines of communication between the adults and stop using the children as carrier pigeons.”
Cole bailed on expressing support or opposition of the “Mom’s for Liberty” organization: “I would have to say, looking at the date of formation; it was organized on the heels of Covid, so it was probably formed out of anger towards the government.”
Even so, it’s worth noting that according to a page on his website for his 2022 run for School Board (page no longer available), two of Cole’s candidate priorities were to fight against “pornography” in High School level books and teachers’ indoctrination of students. And in an “Appalachian Online” 2022 interview, “He said he wants to make sure that the history that is being taught “not the history that America fought to get away from.” I’m not clear on which history — or what history? — Cole was referring to–The history of slavery?
Cole would like to see the School Board start holding meetings away from the central office and in schools if possible. He also wants to see BOE meetings live streamed and archived and to gear up more local business support for schools: “It seems like everyone “sponsors” or “supports” the college…. Our students are neglected because the limelight is always on the college. Those students came here; our students are from here, so let’s lift up and encourage what’s ours.”
Cole’s X (Twitter) bio says he’s “Just your average dad trying not to raise liberal kids!” Among his “Four Focuses” is “Protecting our children from harmful and divisive ideologies that seek to undermine our nation’s founding principles.”