To the editor,
It was an honor to serve on the Madison County School Board the last four years. To ensure continued conservative and common-sense oversight of Madison’s public schools, I hope you will consider voting for Colonel Graham Davidson, Mrs. Lauran Gordon, and Mr. Mitch Dickey in this year’s school board elections.
I am very confident that Graham Davidson, a retired Army officer with an impressive educational resume and a strong faith, will be outstanding. He works well with others, is a strong problem-solver, and a thoughtful decision-maker. He will be a great resource in continuing to improve the academic performance of our schools and posturing our schools for long-term success. Of equal importance, I think he will be reliable partner in continuing our efforts to re-build trust between our conservative community and the national public school system by rejecting harmful “woke” absurdities like mandatory masking of five year olds during a pandemic, seeking to remove religion from our schools, allowing boys in girls’ sports and locker-rooms, teaching children that America today is a systemically racist country, or pretending that parents don’t have the primary right and responsibility to educate their children, wherever a child is educated. Graham is a thoughtful and good man and I think he will be a conservative leader on the board and he has my unqualified endorsement.
I am not as certain of the policy positions of Mrs. Gordon or Mr. Dickey, but based on past statements and conversations with them, I believe that they, joined by Graham Davidson, are the three most conservative candidates running in this election and are therefore the best fit for Madison County. Mrs. Gordon and Mr. Dickey are both deeply committed to improving our district’s academics, opportunities, and facilities and I’m excited to see their contributions in leading our school system.
I am glad Ms. Shankle is running to give Madison voters a choice in this election that will fill three seats, and I thank her for her willingness to serve. She appears to be a committed and hard-working leader in the community. However, I think that her statements during the candidate forum, her social media history during some of the school board’s recent actions, and the content of some of her recent remarks to the Culpeper NAACP indicate that she holds more liberal positions than the other candidates, out of alignment with the more traditional values of most Madison voters. Her statements indicate a desire to return to the progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that are central to the left-wing woke movement, to resurrect SEL programs that are often used across the country to indoctrinate kids in Democratic Party ideology, and to support allowing sexually explicit material in our school, among other liberal Democratic Party tendencies.
I therefore strongly recommend that conservatives, moderates, and Republicans vote for Davidson, Gordon, and Dickey in this election.
Christopher Wingate
Madison
