The Gazette, Dec  23 2003

Three school board races draw candidates

by Sean R. Sedam
Staff Writer

The field for next year's school board elections became clearer late Monday as the filing deadline approached, with three candidates running for each of the three seats up for grabs.

Two candidates so far have filed to challenge board President Sharon W. Cox of Germantown for her at-large seat.

Tommy Le of Kensington withdrew from the District 2 race day and will run for the at-large seat.

Michael Anthony Enriquez Ibañez of Montgomery Village also filed Monday to opposed Cox.

Ibañez has been an educator for 21 years, including teaching sixth grade in Montgomery County Public Schools and serving as a principal in Los Angeles.

He teaches elementary math and science at St. Catherine Laboure, a Catholic school in Wheaton.

"I'm concerned about the future of the children of Montgomery County," he said, "specifically those children who attend poorer performing schools."

The race for the District 2 seat occupied by Walter N. Lange of North Potomac features Robert Astrove of Rockville and former board member Steven N. Abrams of Rockville.

Lange said last week he plans to withdraw from the race, but had not done so as of Monday. The deadline to withdraw is 5 p.m. Dec. 31.

Sheldon Fishman and Valerie Ervin, both of Silver Spring, have filed to oppose Kermit V. Burnett, also of Silver Spring, in his re-election bid for District 4.

Fishman, a former Albert Einstein High School cluster coordinator and vice president of the county council of PTAs, and his wife, Lee, were named the state's PTA Family of the Year in 2001.

He is a member of the Parents Alliance, an advocacy group of teachers and parents of Asian-American, special education and gifted and talented students.

"We're carving the campaign around the theme of knowledge is power," Fishman said.

That includes applying knowledge gained from his PTA experience and knowledge gained by measuring student progress in schools, he said.

Fishman said he also would like to see more cost-effective rollouts and evaluations of school initiatives, such as the recent math curriculum.