Retired teacher unseats Prickett on Wake school board
Wake County school board member Deborah Prickett lost her District 7 seat by a sizable margin Tuesday to retired educator Zora Felton, according to unofficial election results.
With all 23 precincts reporting, Felton had pulled in about 58 percent of the vote, compared to Prickett's 42 percent.
Felton, a Democrat, taught in the Wake County school system for 25 years and received an endorsement from the Wake chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators.
"Every decision made by the Wake County Board of Education should be made with children's best interests in mind," Felton said during her campaign. "I will keep the focus on student success."
Prickett was elected to serve west Raleigh and Morrisville on the Board of Education in 2009 as part of a Republican-backed bloc responsible for a number of changes to how the school system operates, including a controversial move away from the district’s longstanding policy of busing for socio-economic diversity.
She was the only member of that bloc who sought re-election. The seats vacated by Chris Malone, Debra Goldman and John Tedesco were all up for grabs Tuesday.
In District 2, where Tedesco announced in July he wouldn’t seek re-election, Monika Johnson-Hostler defeated Matt Scruggs to serve southeast Wake Count, according to unofficial results. Johnson-Hostler is executive director for the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault and a PTA volunteer. Scruggs works in the automotive industry.
Retired principal Tom Benton topped attorney Don McIntyre to continue serving District 1 in northeast Wake County for a full four-year term, according to unofficial results. Benton was appointed to that seat in February after Malone left to serve in the North Carolina House of Representatives.
In eastern Wake County’s District 9, the race between Bill Fletcher and Nancy Caggia was still too close to call at 11 p.m., but unofficial results had Fletcher leading with 51 percent of the vote. Fletcher, who previously served 12 years on the school board, had been appointed to Goldman's seat earlier this year after she left to serve as executive director for a nonprofit.
