As I reported earlier, Perry’s highly regarded superintendent was bought out. This put the township into interim superintendent mode. I have to say that this duck (interim guy) could not have been any lamer, which was good in terms of damage control, but bad for the kids. After spending a year watching him in meetings, I had to wonder why he had a job in the district at all. Apparently his former position was useless and was, for all intents and purposes, eliminated, and here he was the superintendent.
Our core team for TBPS got busy in October and interviewed about 16 potential candidates for the school board slate. The team chose Chuck Mercer, a retired lawyer; Ken Mertz, a member of the core; and Gwen Freeman, a regular attendee of board meetings to represent the TBPS slate. They filed in February and TBPS formed a PAC.
There was one other guy running who I felt was definitely a competitor. He is one of those good looking, charismatic, and charming guys. I was listening, and I knew that he was throwing up smoke and mirrors. But the problem was how to expose his weaknesses without going into attack mode. Come to find out that underneath all that charm and good looks was a guy who wasn’t all that smart and TBPS didn’t have to do a thing. A few days before the election, he ran an ad with his picture smack dab in the middle of two people with massive chips on their shoulders and letters to the editor to prove it. The ad was full of false accusations against TBPS and conspiracy theories concerning the spending of funds in the township. I guess he missed the memo that the township was done with the drama.
Even the day before the election, one of the drama supporters was talking about it all being over and the election results would show the district once and for all that TBPS was out of its collective mind. That comment made the results oh-so-much sweeter. No other candidates got within 3800 votes of our candidates.
With this major win, phase 1 of restoring pride in our district is starting.