Three Hamilton County School Board members upset

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) – Voters showed their displeasure with some local school board members.
Several Hamilton County School seats were upset Thursday night.
Three out of four members up for re-election lost their races.

The only incumbent to be re-elected was Rhonda Thurman.

She ended up beating Patti Skates and Jason Moses.

Some people may be speculating that the Ooltewah basketball rape case affected the races.
But Rhonda Thurman tells News 12, the school board is not to blame for the Ooltewah scandal. She said, “There is absolute anything to do with the situation with Ooltewah, it happened in another county out of town. We were not made aware of it for days and then we didn’t even know what happened for weeks later. I don’t know how the board can be blamed for that.”

For Hamilton County School Board District 2, Kathy Lennon took 51% of the vote over incumbent Jonathan Welch.
He took 49% of 3,497 votes cast.

In District 4, incumbent school board member George Ricks lost his seat.
Tiffanie Robinson will take over the position with 37% of the vote compared to Ricks’s 34%.
Montrell Besley took 24% of the 2,185 votes cast.

For Hamilton County School Board District 7, incumbent Donna Horn fell behind in the voting early on.
She took 32% of the vote compared to challenger Joe Wingate’s 68%.
More than 3,600 people cast their ballots Thursday.
News 12 spoke to Wingate in June about his plans for change. He said, “To recruit and then maintain passionate, qualified educators, and we’ve got to do a better job of that. I think we can begin some of that by maybe creating some incentives for experienced educators to go into some of the – maybe low performing schools and serve as mentors.”

See the full results here.