Election results must matter to officials

While Worcester County voters are celebrating or bemoaning the results of Tuesday’s presidential election — 63% of them will be rejoicing and 34% will be grinding their teeth in despair — the only contests in the county turned out the way they should have.

In the three county board of education elections, voters solidly rejected the notion that Worcester’s public schools are on the brink of moral, academic and managerial collapse. Clearly, they are not, and the voters agreed by returning incumbents Jon Andes, Elena McComas and Donald Smack Sr. to office.

Although some Worcester County Commissioners would love to gain more control over the public school system via a more sympathetic school board, the electorate’s support of the board’s incumbents suggests that a public majority likes things the way they are.

Further, Tuesday’s results  indicate that most people would not look kindly on renewed attempts to malign or persecute the public schools in pursuit of that goal.

More succinctly, a repeat of tactics of the past — painting the schools as hotbeds of violence, sticking with punitively flat funding, and treating school officials as suspects who can’t be trusted — would not be well received by the voting public.

A more pragmatic, even collaborative, approach this year and the next between the school board and the commissioners would serve the commissioners well, assuming they intend to stand for election two years from now.

This doesn’t mean that the school board can’t be criticized, complained about or called on to explain itself, but this election does make clear that the burning desire for change board challengers thought they saw never really existed.