New faces, but same partisan makeup for Guilford County Board of Education

In the countywide, at-large race, Democrat Alan Sherouse won with 55% of the vote, according to complete but unofficial results. Republican Demetria Carter took 45%.

Sherouse is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Greensboro. 

“I’m very excited to serve and I am excited that Guilford County has embraced a positive message about our school district,” Sherouse said Tuesday night.

That message, he said, “focuses on the right things,” like, “improving our facilities and working for equity and supporting our teachers and rejecting any effort to turn our schools into a cultural battleground that is bad for everybody.”

In their campaigns, Sherouse and Carter often stood out as complete opposites in their views on social issues. For example, while Carter said that she was “appalled at the LGBTQ agenda in our schools” and that teachers should not reveal their sexual orientations, Sherouse meanwhile emphasized that schools should be safe places for LGBTQ students and for students from all different types of families, and he said teachers should feel free to share their sexual orientation, for example, being able to display pictures of their partner in the classroom.

And while Carter was recruited to run by members of the group Take Back Our Schools-GCS, Sherouse said his run was partly motivated by seeing “all of our schools threatened,” by a larger “regressive” movement targeting schools that he sees as represented locally by the group. 

Sherouse will fill the seat held by Democrat Winston McGregor, who chose not to run for reelection. McGregor is also the board’s vice chairwoman, a role that the board members elect from within their own ranks.

Republican Crissy Pratt won with 58.5% of the vote, according to complete but unofficial results. Democrat Amanda Cook took 41.5%.

Pratt said she is a former fifth, sixth, and seventh grade teacher and previously taught in schools near Washington, D.C. More recently, she’s worked in online education, including as head of curriculum for a global company. She also said she is director of instructional design for a company called Pansophic Learning, for whom she is managing the production of K-5 online math classes.

Pratt said she’s not a fan of party-line votes on the school board and that more time built in for discussion could lead to more cross-party persuasion. She said concern over district academic performance results also helped motivate her to run.

Pratt will fill the seat held by Republican Anita Sharpe, who did not run for another term. 

Incumbent Linda Welborn won with 52% of the vote Tuesday, according to complete but unofficial results. Deon Clark took 48%.

Welborn first won election to the school board in 2012. She said she wants to see the school board stronger in guiding the district’s direction and in serving as a check and balance on the choices of the superintendent and school administration.

Democrat Khem Irby won with 52.5% of the vote, according to complete but unofficial results. Republican Tim Andrew took 47.5%.

Irby has served on the board since 2018. She previously worked in the district’s afterschool care program and has held leadership roles with education advocacy groups such as Parents Across America and The Mothers’ Agenda of New York.

Irby’s goals for the district include continuing to advocate for teacher pay and staff salaries, continuing to expand student choices as far as what schools and programs they can attend, and continuing to close the gap on the literacy learning loss accrued during the pandemic.

Board of Education Chairwoman Deena Hayes-Greene, who represents District 8, had no opposition on the ballot in either the primary or general election and will keep her seat on the board.

The winners will be sworn in to their positions at the first board meeting in December. The board’s five other seats were not up for reelection. 

However, the board will have to fill one of those seats after Republican Board Member Pat Tillman won a seat on the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday. Tillman has said that his understanding is that the Guilford County Republican Party would pick someone to fill his District 3 school board seat, and then the Board of Education would vote on that pick.