Monthly Archive for April, 2005

Page 3 of 8

Racism, the School Board, and Griffin

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 22, 2005 in Education and Politics. 24 Comments

In today’s Progress, James Fernald provides an update on last night’s school board meeting, at which Superintendent Scottie Griffin resigned from her position.

After reading the piece, I’m inclined to agree with others who have said that things are going to get worse before they get better. There is great potential for this to get uglier than it has so far. The first red flag is that the 5-2 vote to accept Griffin’s resignation was almost, but not require, along racial lines — the two dissenting votes were cast by Muriel Wiggins and Bill Igbani, two of the three blackschool board members. Accurately or not, this provides the public impression that votes were cast for reasons of race. Igbani said, after the meeting, that he intends to leave the school board before too long — again, a red flag.

After the announcement came, Rev. R.A. Johnson — a strident supporter of Griffin and a harsh critic of those who have questioned Griffin’s qualifications and methods — declared: “Don’t think you can hire somebody black and that’s going to satisfy us.” This calls attention to the bind that the school board is in: if the next superintendent is black, there will be accusations of tokenism; if s/he is white, there will be further accusations of racism.

In the meantime, Dr. Griffin remains the superintendent until June 30, and it’s sure to be an uncomfortable two months.

In this week’s Hook, Courteney Stuart has further revelations about Griffin’s background, including that she’s held seven positions in the past decade, and left four of them midway through the school year, which is quite uncommon. It turns out that the school board knew nothing about her resume or her two legal cases, because they — rather appallingly — counted on the recruiting firm to take care of that. According to the board’s attorney, they may consider taking legal action against the search firm.

All of that may be beside the point, though — if her resignation is perceived to have been forced because of her race, the facts are unlikely to persuade those who see nothing more than institutional racism.

It’s not surprising that Igbani plans on leaving the school board. What’s surprising is that they’re not all planning on quitting.

Tingley Denies Toscano Push-Poll Allegation

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 22, 2005 in Politics. 1 Comment

In a press release yesterday, House of Delegates candidate Kim Tingley denied fellow-candidate David Toscano’s allegations that Tingley has been running a push-poll. The press release reads as follows:

Tingley Takes High Road Responding to Toscano Allegations

April 20, 2005–Clement “Kim” Tingley’s campaign today denied the use of negative campaigning in response to allegations from the David Toscano campaign.

As is standard practice in political campaigns, the Tingley for Delegate campaign has hired a professional opinion survey firm to conduct a scientific survey of concerns affecting voters in this district.

The survey, which was designed as a scientific measure of voter concerns, covered a broad range of issues relevant for this election. It also included a small number of positive and negative questions about both candidates. In the poll more negative questions were asked about Mr. Tingley than Mr. Toscano.

Mr. Tingley denounced push polls and negative campaigning as unethical. When asked to comment, Mr. Tingley responded “I do not believe Democrats should attack other Democrats in primaries, since this only hurts the party in the general election.”

A former public servant with 15 years in county and city government, Kim Tingley has spent the past 20 years building affordable housing with his own business. He serves on the board of Virginia Forever, where he has worked towards clean water funding and land conservation.

Tingley’s depiction of the poll seems to match the portrayal by cvillenews.com user Jack, who received one of the calls.

Scottie Griffin Resigns

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 21, 2005 in Education and Politics. 20 Comments

cvilleyankee writes: “The School Board accepted the resignation of Dr. Scottie Griffin effective June 30. Dr. Bobby Thompson & Ms. Gertrude Ivory will act as superintendent during the transition period. A separation agreement was also accepted by the Board.”

Nothin’ against cvilleyankee, but can I get some confirmation on this?

Update: “Upset” writes that s/he was there, saying that at around 8:40pm, the school board announced that Scottie Griffin has decided to “pursue other interests.” I recommend bowling.

Update: The increasingly-on-the-ball Daily Progress has a story on their site, even though the meeting just got out, like, an hour ago. New facts include that the board accepted her resignation by a 5-2 vote, board chair Dede Smith cried after the meeting was through (“It’s been one of the hardest nights I’ve ever had”), and Griffin won’t actually give up the gig until June 30.

Bowerman Stepping Down from BoS

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 21, 2005 in Politics. Closed

Albemarle Supervisor David Bowerman announced at last night’s meeting that he’s not running for reelection to his Rio District seat. The 61-year-old has served since 1989. Tom Jakubowski has already announced his candidacy, and Bowerman says that at least a couple of other people are interested in running. WINA has the story.

Toscano Accuses Tingley of Push-Polling

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 20, 2005 in Politics. 1 Comment

In a press release today, candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 57th District Hosue of Delegates David Toscano accused one of his competitors for the seat, developer Kim Tingley, of push-polling — that is, paying a polling firm to call voters and say bad things about Toscano, under the guise of being a poll. The press release reads:

Last night, many Democrats in the 57th District received telephone calls from a Florida company apparently hired by candidate Kim Tingley to conduct push-polling interviews. The pollsters, who when asked, identified themselves as “working for Tingley,” made numerous and incorrect assertions about the character and record of three-term City Councilor and former Charlottesville Mayor David Toscano. If, in fact, Mr. Tingley is not behind this “guerilla marketing” campaign tactic, we call on him to repudiate this effort being conducted on his behalf. If he is indeed the perpetrator of these negative push-polls, we call on him to cease any further such activity. This tactic is reminiscent of the negative campaign style witnessed in the recent presidential election and is consistent with the type of smear campaigns that distort a candidate’s record under a win-at-all cost mentality. If Mr. Tingley wants to continue to be a progressive player in the Charlottesville area, he will need to realize that here, we try to run clean, issues-oriented campaigns.

Has anybody gotten one of these calls? Is it really a push poll — which would be very unusual and probably a big waste of Tingley’s money — or is it just a regular ol’ poll that asks, reasonably enough, about Toscano? Is Toscano feeling the heat from Tingley? Or is Tingley trying to get his name in the news? Tingley Tingley Tingley?

Disclosure: I’ve been known to volunteer my time for Rich Collins, who is also a candidate in this race. I’ll keep disclosing this ’til I get sick of it. The good news is that he’s a mediator, by career, so maybe he can sit these two guys down and get ’em to work out their differences.

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