School Board Member Marcia Andrews Faces 4 Challengers - Part 1

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The most crowded Palm Beach County School Board race is the one for District 6.

Incumbent School Board member Marcia Andrews has four challengers as she tries for a fourth term, this time coming out of the challenges brought on by the pandemic.

"Because we have so much unfinished learning to take care of...mental health, school security and safety...just so many things that we've got to complete."

She gives the board an "A-" for how they handled the pandemic.

"I think we were able to turn around schools to do remote learning quickly. We worked closely with the mental health professionals, our doctors, our health department to follow the medical advice."

But Andrews and the other school board members voted to keep masks mandatory even after the the state ordered schools to give parents the final say. And she says she'd do it all again the same way.

"So I think what we did at the local level was the correct thing to do. To follow the professionals that we have here at the local level, the healthcare professionals that we work with that gave us advice on a daily basis about what we needed to do for our district right here in Palm Beach County."

Candidate Jeff Browning sees it differently.

"When the mandates and the directions come down from the governor of the state, I don't care regardless of what political affiliation I was at, I mean I would take that directive."

Browning is a former general contractor and currently a realtor, as well as a longtime resident of Wellington.

One of his top priorities is school safety and Browning says he is all for a law enforcement takeover on campus by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Also...

"I think there should be a camera in every room at every school. If somebody does get into a school at least that way you could basically determine exactly where they're at and probably make it a lot easier to evacuate the rest of the school."

Something else he speaks up in support of is arming some school employees.

"I would definitely like to see people if they want to carry and they go through rigorous training, I'm all for that."

Andrews, is against that idea.

"(I'm) certainly not in favor of arming teachers and putting more guns in our schools. I'm looking for people, like the police, who are very experienced doing that work."

Also in this race are V. Deanne Ewers, Jen Showalter and Amanda Silvestri. Several attempts to contact Ewers were unsuccessful.

We'll hear from the other two candidates on Tuesday, on-air and right here at the Election Spotlight page.


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