Nearly half of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education will be new next year, after challengers unseated two incumbents in Tuesday’s elections, and two seats were left open after incumbents declined to run again.
Six of the board's nine seats were up for grabs. Two incumbents, Thelma Byers-Bailey and Summer Nunn, didn't run. Shamaiye Haynes won the race to replace Byers-Bailey in west Charlotte’s District 2 and Anna London took Nunn’s District 6 seat.
Political newcomer Charlitta Hatch beat out incumbent Melissa Easley for the District 1 seat. And in District 5, Cynthia Stone beat out incumbent Lisa Cline, the board’s lone Republican.
Board member Stephanie Sneed, the board's chair, was the only incumbent in a competitive race to hold her seat. The board's vice chair, Dee Rankin, ran unopposed.
While the school board is nominally nonpartisan, the candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Party won all six seats.
Here's who won:
- District 1
- Charlitta Hatch (44.83%)
- Bill Fountain (29.14%)
- Melissa Easley (25.61%)
- District 2
- Shamaiye Haynes (74.52%)
- Juanrique Hall (24.48%)
- District 3
- Dee Rankin (Unopposed)
- District 4
- Stephanie Sneed (62.72%)
- Robert Edwards (18.57%)
- Jillian King (17.61%
- District 5
- Cynthia Stone (56.80%)
- Lisa Cline (42.47%
- District 6
- Anna London (49.85%)
- Justin Shealy (26.16%)
- Toni Emehel (23.07%)
