There is one contested race for the Warren County School District Board of Education between Mary Passinger, the board’s current vice president and a former teacher, and Misty Moore, a challenger with a background in private business.

The pair recently took part in a debate in Sugar Grove hosted by the Warren County League of Women Voters that touched on a wide array of topics. Moore acquitted herself well during the forum, but in our opinion Passinger deserves another four-year term on the school board for making the decision to close the Sheffield and Youngsville high schools. It’s the same reason we endorse Paul Mangione, the board’s president, though his race is uncontested in Region 1.

For years we have debated the best ways to improve the school district’s financial stability and educational opportunity for students in the Warren County School District. And while Moore raises some interesting points about the hiring of superintendents from outside of Warren County and about the district’s spending on administration, the long-discussed but never acted upon closure of high schools was one action the school board could take to cut costs and increase course offerings. The numbers say the decision was easy. But there is a reason the decision hadn’t been made despite years of discussion; school board members knew that doing the right thing was going to upset a lot of people. Board members weren’t wrong. Three new board members were elected in 2024 in large part because people were unhappy with the move to close high schools. But we elect school board members to make the difficult decisions even if they are unpopular. We think history will bear out that the school board made the right decision closing high schools even if there are still tweaks needed to bus routes and extracurricular offerings.

In our view this election isn’t about past decisions. It’s about future ones. The school closure vote wasn’t the end of the district’s restructuring – it’s the beginning. Mangione and Passinger, in our view, deserve another term on the board to continue that work.