Mitchell County has joined Yancey and other counties that will hold primary partisan elections for the Board of Education. Mitchell County Commissioners voted last month to adopt a resolution to include Mitchell County on NC House Bill 88, which was originally for Guildford County, but had already added Ashe and McDowell counties. The HB88, which passed March 16th, calls for partisan elections for Board of Education. Under North Carolina law, school board elections are non-partisan unless a local bill, such as HB88 is passed. At a recent commissioners meeting a large crowd, including several school teachers showed up to complain about the resolution. Complaints included a lack of transparency on the part of the commissioners and the difficulty for unaffiliated voters to get their names on a partisan school board ballot. On the other side people believe that having candidates declared Democrat or Republican allows voters to better judge the candidates’ value systems and thus the decisions they would make for the school system.
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