Tauber elected new Chair of Dare Ed Board

Board also continues school mask mandate

At its Dec. 14 meeting, the Dare County Board of Education voted for a changing of the guard — electing Joe Tauber as the new Board Chair and David Twiddy the new Vice-Chair.

In both cases, the vote was by a narrow 4 to 3 margin, with the four male members on the board supporting Tauber and Twiddy and the three female members voting for incumbent Chair Mary Ellon Ballance and incumbent Vice Chair Margaret Lawler. The other members of the board are Susan Bothwell, Frank Hester and Carl Woody.

In remarks after the vote, Tauber said, “My leadership style is basically to find out what we have in common with each other as opposed to our differences. I think we’re much better off as a community if we find out what we have in common. There are differences and we can work those out. But I’d say the one thing that we have in common is our love of children.”

Later in the meeting, the board, by a 5-2 margin, also voted to make no changes to the current policy requiring that students, staff and visitors wear face coverings in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Board Chair Tauber and Board Member Woody cast the dissenting votes. Several supporters of maintaining the mask mandate said they were doing so primarily to prevent COVID-19 quarantines in the schools.

That vote followed a public comment period in which at least half a dozen members of the public voiced opposition to mandating masks during the school day.