Catherine Lorenze: "Red Apple Mom" or Meddling Madwoman?

Posted by: curious ()

Date: October 13, 2011 07:28PM

Fairfax Underground, you decide- is she genuine in her concerns, or is she simply a loud, annoying, you know what?

Something always strikes me about these people . . . self aggrandizing, petulant, fired from being a PTA volunteer (gimmie a break).

Quote: Poor neighborhoods in Fairfax “make out like bandits” compared to the county’s affluent areas, Lorenze wrote on her blog.

Go to private school fool!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/gop-strategist-a-key-actor-in-fairfax-school-election/2011/10/06/gIQAVMX4hL_print.html

GOP strategist a key actor in Fairfax school election
By Emma Brown, Thursday, October 13, 4:24 PM

Her name won’t appear on the ballot. Most voters have no idea who she is. But Catherine Lorenze, a sharp-tongued parent activist and Republican strategist, is a pivotal player in the race for Fairfax County School Board.

Half the board’s 12 members are retiring, ensuring high turnover among those who set the direction of one of the country’s largest, highest-performing school systems.

Most of the candidates promising dramatic change are running under Lorenze’s tutelage, echoing messages she crafted about transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility.

A McLean mother of three, Lorenze accuses the board of ignoring input from parents and teachers on student-discipline reform and other hot-button issues. She contends that the board’s oversight of Superintendent Jack D. Dale has been toothless and that it has unfairly allowed class sizes to balloon in wealthy neighborhoods (including her own) while schools in poor areas get more resources.

Much of Lorenze’s work is behind the scenes: writing campaign plans, analyzing election records, organizing volunteers. But she also broadcasts her views on her blog, Red Apple Mom, where she writes about incumbents she wants to depose.

Chief among her targets are Chairwoman Jane K. Strauss (Dranesville) and Vice Chairman Ilryong Moon (At-Large).

“Grandmother Janie Strauss is in her second decade on the School Board. Snooooozzzzzzeeeeee. Can’t she go do something else already?” Lorenze wrote in June. “Ilryong Moon – the human weather vane who can’t cast a vote until he sees which way the political winds are blowing – was first elected in 1995. Can’t he go do something else too?”

Moon, who said he is proud of his record as a deliberate thinker, shrugged off the attack. “I cannot get upset by one person’s personality,” he said. Strauss, an 18-year board veteran now facing a tough reelection battle against Lorenze-backed candidate Louise Epstein, was more pointed.

“Catherine seeks out the divisive issues and then plays on them,” she said. “If her candidates win, that’s the voice. Is that the voice we want in Fairfax County?”

Elizabeth Schultz, Republican-endorsed candidate in the Springfield district, said Lorenze helped her devise slogans and plan logistics early in the campaign. Lorenze has played less of a day-to-day role in recent weeks, said Schultz. “Once I got rolling, honestly, I sorta ran with it,” she said.

Lorenze learned how to shape a soundbite while working on campaigns with Republican consultant Mike Murphy during the 1990s, helping produce advertisements for high-profile figures such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman (R).

Now she is volunteering full-time on behalf of at least six candidates to whom she has donated services worth more than $80,000, according to financial disclosure forms — a substantial amount for down-ballot races usually run on the cheap.

She also helped run successful special-election campaigns in 2009 and 2010 for Patty Reed (Providence), a Republican-endorsed member, and Sandy Evans (Mason), a Democratic-endorsed member. Both known for challenging the superintendent, Reed and Evans are running unopposed for reelection.

Lorenze says she has a personal stake in the election. Her 12-year-old son has shared elementary classrooms with more than 35 students, and Lorenze says that is unacceptable.

“I get one shot with my kids,” she said. “I’m not willing to wait for class size to normalize in 10 years. I’m impatient.”

Lorenze, 44, was a traditional school volunteer until five years ago, when she organized parents to raise questions about various issues at Kent Gardens Elementary. She was asked to leave her post as room parent. Her agitations for change “had an overwhelming impact on the instructional day,” said principal Robyn Hooker.

Months later, Lorenze was also fired from her volunteer PTA post. “Circumstances have made it necessary to end your appointments,” read a certified letter delivered to her home.

She joined Fairgrade, a group seeking to revise the county’s strict grading policy, and showed up at her first meeting with a campaign plan in hand. “I said, ‘You guys are never going to win this doing a PTA dog and pony show,’ ” she recalled. “ ‘You need to run this like a political referendum on the superintendent and the school board.’ ”

That aggressive strategy helped Fairgrade succeed, and now Lorenze hopes it will help upend the school board.

Some in Fairfax hail Lorenze as a champion of parents. Some discount her as the representative of a disgruntled minority. Others fear her.

“She spins issues, she spins statements, she takes things out of context and she writes them down,” said retiring board member Elizabeth Bradsher (Springfield), who battled Lorenze over a board decision to close Clifton Elementary School. “She’ll do anything she can to make sure these candidates win.”

Lorenze said her critics simply don’t like her questions. “They say it’s adversarial,” she said. “I say it’s drilling down, forcing those people to defend that they don’t have any data to support their positions.”

Most of the candidates she is backing are in some way connected with Fairgrade or with the Fairfax Education Coalition, a group of parent and teacher organizations that has been critical of the board. Lorenze is communications director for both groups.

She has helped Schultz and Fairgrade president Megan McLaughlin, a Democratic-endorsed candidate running for the Braddock seat.

Lorenze is also working on behalf of three at-large candidates: Sheree Brown-Kaplan and Lolita Mancheno-Smoak, who are both Republican-endorsed, and Steve Stuban, who has no partisan endorsement.

But she is directing most of her energy to unseating Strauss, whom Lorenze blames for McLean’s high class sizes. “She consistently redistributes our resources to the rest of the county,” said Lorenze.

Strauss has supported a staffing formula that sends more teachers to — and thus lowers class sizes at — schools with high numbers of poor children and children who speak English as a second language.

The result is uneven class sizes. Some high-poverty schools along Route 1 in the Mt. Vernon district, for example, have average class sizes in the high teens and low 20s. In well-to-do McLean, averages hover in the high 20s and classes can climb into the mid-30s.

Lorenze said she understands the philosophy but says it’s gone too far. Poor neighborhoods in Fairfax “make out like bandits” compared to the county’s affluent areas, Lorenze wrote on her blog.

Strauss said she agrees that budget cuts have made for untenably large classes. But she defended her support for the staffing formula. Public schools are obligated to ensure all students achieve, she said, and that means more teachers for those who come to class with the least.

“If we don’t help the kids who need additional help, we are wasting the minds and the talents of many of our citizens,” she said.

In Dranesville, Strauss’s opponent — her first since 1999 — is Republican-endorsed Epstein.

A former tax lawyer and Fairgrade co-founder, Epstein served as PTA president at the county’s renowned Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. She has pledged to change the staffing formula. Like many of the candidates Lorenze is backing, Epstein has won endorsements from county teachers’ groups.

Lorenze said she never considered running for school board herself. She prefers campaigning to governing, and can’t imagine collaborating with the administrators she has criticized for years.

“For me to have to work with them would drive me crazy,” she said. “I like the kingmaking. It’s more fun.”

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