Interim Pick Shows How Politicized Williamson County’s School Board Has Become

Williamson County commissioners spent much of their meeting Monday night finding the replacement for school board member Paul Bartholomew, who stepped down a year early. The contested interim appointment reveals how politicized the county’s school board has become.

The
first nominee for the post polarized the process. Laurie Cardoza-Moore is a conservative activist who’s led fights to
change social studies textbooks and stop the
building of a mosque in Murfreesboro.

She
pulled her name from consideration in recent days, opting to just run for a full term next year.

Parents like Jason Grant had been pressuring the county commission to shy away from a firebrand, telling commissioners Monday night there’s already been
unnecessary tension in recent years.

“There are individuals within our community that do not welcome our students’ exposure to other cultures, who do not recognize that we exist in a globally competitive environment, and that wrap themselves so strongly in their beliefs that they do not care that their actions exclude and discriminate against others,” he said.

Grant supported
Anne McGraw for the job. She’s a mother of two and a marketing manager at Nissan North America.

“I have no other agenda and no affiliations other than being a parent and the success of our Williamson County Schools students,” McGraw told commissioners before their vote.

It took two rounds of voting, but the 25-member commission elected McGraw by the slimmest of majorities over
Chris Koczaja, who was the nominee of the commissioners from the 4th school board district.

Making a point of how contentious the school board has become, one commissioner described the hundreds of emails he’d received on the matter, many from parent group
Williamson Strong. Another noted that earlier in the meeting they unanimously named an interim county commissioner without any discussion.