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Mettler, Batey, Heinrichs win KHSD seats
| Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 1:44 AM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 6:49 AM
The Kern High School District board is about to change dramatically.
Photos:
Ken Mettler
Bryan Batey
Joel Heinrichs.
Ken Mettler, Bryan Batey and Joel Heinrichs won three seats on the five-member board Tuesday night.
Mettler claimed first place with about 17 percent of the vote, Batey second with just under 16 percent and Heinrichs third with 13.5 percent.
The candidates booted incumbent Sam Thomas from office. Thomas, who has served for the past eight years, received just under 10 percent of the vote, putting him in sixth place.
Nine candidates ran for the three seats on the board for the 36,000-student district.
Mettler, a conservative homebuilder and president of the Rosedale Union School District board, credited his first-place finish to his strong viewpoints.
Mettler made raising test scores a main topic of his campaign. He also said if he had been on the school board in 2004, he would have voted to ban Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” from district reading lists after some parents called the award-winning novel obscene.
Conservative Christian trustee Chad Vegas endorsed both Mettler and Jim Parks for the open seats. Parks was in fourth place as of Tuesday night.
“I think people are hungry for specifics,” Mettler said. “They want to see candidates speak for themselves.”
Batey, also a homebuilder, won his seat after a campaign based on boosting test scores and vocational education. Heinrichs, CEO of Lightspeed Systems, pushed vocational education expansion throughout his campaign.
“They aren’t ready for work,” Heinrichs said. “We need to do a much better job with vocational education.”
Both Heinrichs and Batey are former board members. Heinrichs served from 1998 to 2000 before leaving the area. Batey served as a trustee for 10 years before losing his seat to Bob Hampton and Vegas in 2004.
This year’s race for the three seats was one of the most visible in Kern County.
Candidates posted signs throughout the city. Thomas did not campaign. Others raised big money and went door to door.
Batey raised the most — $153,973 as of Oct. 21 including $120,000 of his own money — in hopes of winning the position.
One of the new board members’ first tasks will be to tackle the largest school attendance boundary changes in the district’s history.
The board is scheduled to vote in March on new boundaries to prepare for the openings of two new high schools in 2008.
Other candidates included: Mark Hutson, Paul Press, Michael Daillak, and Aaron Steenbergen.