Schools

School Board Member Not Leaving GOP

Janet Read said calls for her and three other colleagues to break ties with the Republican Party are not warranted.

As long as she can remember, Post 4 school board member Janet Read has been a Republican.

She was baffled when no one in the party came to her before passing .

"I was really surprised to just read about it in a press release rather than any of them reaching out to the actual board members," Read said today.

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Friday night, the full committee of the Cherokee County Republican Party held a 15-minute meeting at the . Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, was among those in attendance.

"This wasn't one or two people getting in a room," said Brian Laurens, the party's first vice chair. "There's over 70 people on the full committee for the Republican Party in Cherokee County."

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There was only one item on the agenda: the resolution urging Read, Mike Chapman, Robert Wofford and Rick Steiner to reconsider their positions or to renounce their Republican ties.

Without discussion, according to minutes from the meeting, the committee unanimously adopted the language.

"This board let us down," said Laurens, who attended . "Mike Chapman had the audacity to stand up and say that if you do not like your school, you had the option to move. That is not a position of the Republican Party and we felt like we had to say something to that effect."

Friday's vote was the latest twist in a saga that began . The decision forced Cherokee Charter Academy to return to the local board that twice denied its petition for a charter.

"When (Cherokee Charter Academy) came back to us," Read said, "we actually presented them a petition that said this would work for us. The charter people did not seem interested in that.

"Rather, they seemed interested in just passing these amendments out 45 minutes ahead of" .

She said she "could've spent the public input time, I guess, sitting in the back reading (the amendments). But I chose to listen to the speakers that stood in line for several hours."

Without reading the amendements, Read said she couldn't sign a "$7 million contract for five years of taxpayer money."

Wofford, Chapman and Steiner joined Read in voting against the charter. Messages left for them and district spokeswoman Barbara Jacoby were not returned.

After the local board rejected Cherokee Charter Academy, the . Under that designation, the school lost the local funding it would've received as a district-approved or state-commissioned charter school. . The school is slated to open next Monday.

Read said she has no plans to leave the GOP.

"I don't feel that I've done something that would call for them to renounce me or denounce me," she said. "Is that in their authority to just tell someone that they can't be apart of the party anymore?"

Laurens said he's not sure that "there's necessarily a consequence" for failing to comply with the party's request.

"But they probably won't have the support of the Republican Party," he said. "And they might find themselves with opposition next year."


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