These three candidates are competing in Boise school board Race 2. Here’s our pick

In Race 2 for the Boise school board, the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board has decided to endorse incumbent Andy Hawes for a four-year term.

Hawes was appointed by the board a little over a year ago after Trustee Dennis Doan resigned to work in Washington. The intervening year has shown that the board made a good decision.

Simply put, Hawes has performed well in his time on the board, and students in the district would be well served if he continued in that position. He has shown himself to be careful, measured and reasonable.

And Hawes has been tested. Serving on the board during one of the most difficult periods of time to do so — the COVID-19 pandemic — he has shown himself to be capable of dealing with a variety of competing concerns and forging a policy that attempts to strike a balance. We have not agreed with every decision the school board has made, but all-in-all it has worked to protect students, teachers and the education process during a harrowing time.

Hawes has a good grasp of the important responsibilities of a school board member — and just as importantly, of the limitations of that role. He summarized his duties well: to set district policy and to choose and oversee the superintendent. He has not shown excessive eagerness to intervene in areas not under his purview — setting detailed specifics of curriculum, managing teachers or deciding what books go in the library.

Hawes is not the kind of candidate who will be talked into banning books. That is vital at a time when calls for censorship are growing.

And Hawes recognizes recent concerns with “critical race theory” being taught in the classroom for what they are — figments of the imagination. (Such concerns are, we would add, the outcome of propaganda designed to undermine trust in public schools, whipped up by groups bent on dismantling them.) He nonetheless recognizes that the concerns are real, and he has pledged to improve communication with parents who have such worries.

Another candidate in the race — Matthew Shapiro — also deserves an honorable mention. He has a varied background of experience which could be useful on the board, including experience as an educator and helping to set up a charter school. Shapiro has a lot of interesting, potentially innovative ideas about the integration of principles of participatory democracy into schools.

The concern is that Shapiro’s approach could result in paralysis by analysis, or by spending so much time taking input that it would become impossible to run the district well. For that reason, we did not choose to endorse him. He does show promise, and we hope he will continue to refine his ideas about integrating democratic structures into the education system.

Neil Mercer, the third candidate in the race, does not have experience or background directly relevant to serving on the school board. He has argued that the school board isn’t sufficiently transparent, but this charge is quite nonspecific — Mercer said he is mainly concerned with the number of unanimous votes. Mercer seems well-intentioned, but we think Boise School District students would be better served by Hawes.