UPDATE: The other day I came across this essay by Ms. Fernandez on the Journal Sentinel website concerning the virtual schools litigation… Interesting…
The Superintendent of Public Instruction is elected every four years on a statewide basis in the non-partisan spring elections. The current Superintendent, Democrat Elizabeth Burmaster, is not seeking re-election, creating an open seat for April 2009.
Burmaster’s deputy, Dr. Tony Evers, is running for Superintendent as the anointed candidate of the status quo, the bureaucrats, the Democrats, and the teachers unions. Throughout the campaign, he will talk about “great public schools” (WEAC’s slogan) and greater public funding for public schools.
Today, Rose Fernandez announced her candidacy for the post. She is the former president of the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School families. Throughout the last several years, she has waged a noble war with the DPI bureaucrats and teachers union on behalf of virtual charter schools with open enrollment statewide. After an unfavorable court ruling, she worked with legislators to craft compromise legislation that kept the schools open for Wisconsin’s kids. A nurse by profession, Mrs. Fernandez runs a small business with her husband, a local firefighter.
The other conservative candidate in the race, who had already announced, is Dr. Van Mobley. He is currently a professor of history and economics and director of governmental & community relations at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon and a trustee of the Village of Thiensville. He holds his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin. I know Dr. Mobley personally through our mutual involvement in the Republican Party of Ozaukee County.
Kind of floating out there without a constituency that I can discern is the superintendent of the Beloit Public Schools, Lowell Holtz. He longtime administrator and former high school principal.
I will be supporting Van Mobley in this primary, and I hope that other Wisconsin conservatives will join me in doing so. Mrs. Rose Fernandez will try to make this race a referendum on virtual schools. No doubt Wisconsinites support reform and innovation in education, including embracing the potential of technology. Moreover, I personally have tremendous respect and admiration for virtual school families, who are in one sense a type of home-schooler. I appreciate her leadership in that cause. But this single issue has already been more or less resolved in the compromise legislation. Moreover, she has no other experience in education that I can discern, and her administrative experience is limited to her work in two small businesses.
Van Mobley, by contrast, is an elected local official who votes on a municipal budget and administration. As superintendent, he will run an efficient department that saves taxpayers money. He has been active in the party and an advocate for conservatives ideas in Wisconsin’s news media. He has experience in the classroom as a teacher and as an educational administrator at Concordia, a well-respected Wisconsin university.
Tony Evers can be beat: he lost in 1993 to John Benson and 2001 to Libby Burmaster. I hope conservatives will join me in rallying behind Dr. Van Mobley, whose experience in the classroom and as an administrator makes him our strongest candidate for this open seat.
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It would be great to get a conservative in there, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before the teachers union lets that happen.