Ragin puts rezoning attendance lines on Monday school board agenda

With just two board meetings remaining because he is not seeking reelection, Sumter school board chairman Shawn Ragin added a board discussion and vote on implementing rezoning attendance lines or a master plan to Monday’s agenda.

The addition appears to have been made Friday afternoon or Saturday after the original board meeting agenda was posted online for the public Friday morning, and two other trustees with the most experience in public service on the board are questioning Ragin’s motive and say his priorities are not with Sumter School District.

The rezoning (or realignment) and master plan issues and which policy action should come first for the district were both paused by the full board one year ago, in September 2025. The first revelation that the chairman might bring them forward now was at two recent community meetings in Rembert on Sept. 3 and near Mayesville on Thursday, Sept. 10, that also served as campaign events for the upcoming Sumter school board elections in November.

Rezoning all district schools’ attendance lines with implementation for this school year, before conducting a "bigger picture" master plan, lost board majority support a year ago after the district had just parted ways with Superintendent William Wright Jr., in August. Essentially for the whole 2025-26 school year, the district’s chief of schools, Shirley Gamble, served as acting superintendent.

At Thursday’s meeting, Ragin told attendees that "since the new superintendent has been in place for nearly six months, we will bring back the realignment option back to the floor."

The Sumter Item attended both meetings, about which it was not notified beforehand. On Thursday, The Item attempted to speak with Ragin on the matter immediately after the meeting, but he ignored the newspaper and spoke to other attendees.

As of Sunday night, he also had not returned a phone call or text messages from Saturday, which is when The Item found the meeting agenda had changed.

On Friday, the longest-serving trustee and a former board chair, the Rev. Ralph Canty, questioned Ragin’s motives for bringing up the major topic of district rezoning because the chairman has only two meetings remaining as a trustee. Ragin is not seeking reelection because he is attempting to open his own public charter school. Canty’s remarks were published in the Saturday (Sept. 12) edition (see here: https://theitem.com/stories/school-board-will-bring-back-realignment-ragin-says,447064.)

He referenced the public outcry from district parents and others when the proposed realignment study, led by a previous board and outside, third-party consultant, were shared with the community at public information sessions in late 2021 and early 2022.

The board’s realignment committee chair at the time was former Superintendent Frank Baker, who had previously been the longtime superintendent of the more rural, county-area school district in Sumter pre-consolidation.

That board approved rezoning attendance lines 4.5 years ago, in April 2022.

The study only considered school attendance lines’ boundaries and maintaining all schools, rather than the idea of closing low-enrollment schools and consolidating students into fewer campuses.

Since the two former school districts consolidated into a single county-wide district at the start of the 2011-12 school year, Sumter School District's enrollment is down 3,518 students (or 21.7%) as of spring 2026, according to official enrollment data from the state Department of Education. During the last 15 years, the K-12 public education landscape nationwide has changed extensively with an emphasis on "school choice."

The enrollment data used in the rezoning study was from fall 2020, according to The Item’s archives, and even since then the district’s student totals have dropped nearly 2,500 students, or 16.3%. Sumter’s first charter school, Liberty STEAM Charter School that opened for students in August 2021, was not considered in the study.

Rezoning study goals from 2021-22 included developing transportation efficiencies, which had slight improvements overall, and balancing "school facility utilization" with the theme of shuffling students from higher-enrollment schools in the City of Sumter to lower-enrollment schools in the outlying rural areas.

"Paramount to any further deliberation of the present plan is the public outcry against it, which is already on record," Canty, who is seeking reelection, told the newspaper in the Sept. 12 story. "The chair knows that its implementation will create chaos and drive more parents away. This then is not leadership. It is annihilation. It is designed to weaken, if not destroy, our district."

Another trustee who is seeking reelection, Tarah Cousar-Johnson, said Ragin’s move "could be being used as an election tactic" for November in that same story.

More details from the rezoning study and board actions regarding it in recent years were also in The Item’s recent story.

Additionally, the full board recently unanimously agreed to allow new Superintendent Gerald Gary to commission a district facilities study with an outside consultant that would be in line with a long-term master plan and would consider factors such as the age of school facilities and schools' capacity levels with more current enrollment data. That study is expected to be completed by early 2027.

ANOTHER TRUSTEE’S CONCERNS

Area 8 Trustee Phil Leventis, who served 32 years in the state Senate representing the greater Sumter region, spoke Saturday and agreed with Canty that Ragin is not acting in the best interests of the school district.

"As chairman, Ragin lost on the 50% grade floor," Leventis said, "and he lost on realignment when the board backed off until a new superintendent was in place.

"He single-handedly held up the master plan by not emphasizing it and putting it forward. So, now we have no master plan and six-year enrollment numbers in terms of any planning with realignment, and he wants a vote in his last couple of meetings? I don’t think so.

"I think that his leadership has been self-serving and not well thought out. He has got other priorities over the Sumter public school district."

Leventis added if the original realignment plan got the green light now, an estimated 32% of high school students would move to a new school.

"If we move all those high school students just in the name of having the schools balanced in terms of utilization – all very low by the way – then we have to move staff, too," he said. "So, we are not only potentially losing students who no longer feel like they are being part of the system, we're very much in danger of losing a lot of staff who don't want to move as well.

"That reality just shows you how careful you have to be and how you have all the players at the table."

The two recent community meetings in the outlying county areas, where some school board candidates were invited to give their platforms, and another planned for Thursday, Sept. 17, in Pinewood have largely been initiated by Rembert-area Sumter County Councilman Carlton Washington.

The two meetings to date have involved realignment, pushing for magnet schools in those rural areas and the theme of "rural schools versus city schools" by not closing any rural schools. That theme has also permeated with Sumter school board since consolidation in 2011 and been a key factor in the board’s documented dysfunction through the years.

Washington also submitted a magnet school initiative proposal to district administration for Rembert's Rafting Creek Elementary School in the spring (see here: https://theitem.com/stories/councilman-moves-forward-with-magnet-school-proposal,446934).

Washington has been outspoken for realignment at the meetings and for years, dating back to when the study was conducted in 2021-22, and has been on the record against a district master plan. In the realignment study, which is 4.5 years old now, Rafting Creek would nearly triple in enrollment. It is currently the district's lowest-enrollment school with 111 students in grades K-5, according to district data.

On Washington's Facebook page in recent weeks, he has endorsed two school board candidates who are not in his area/district.

At the Rembert meeting on Sept. 3, he told attendees to get realignment passed and on the books there is need for the Sumter community "to flip the board" in favor of the measure.

At both community meetings, on the realignment topic and implementing the study, Washington or any other leaders did not mention district parents’ or teachers’ concerns on the policy.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND OTHER MONDAY MEETING TOPICS

Public participation, a magnet school update and financial updates also highlight the board meeting agenda.

Regarding magnet school alternatives and interest initiated by Washington and directly from at least two other schools, district administration recently completed a survey primarily focused on interests from district parents, teachers and staff. Administration is collaborating with a third-party consultant on that project.

Financial updates are related to the district’s projected net loss for fiscal year 2026, which concluded June 30. District Chief Financial Officer Shatika Spearman will provide the update.

Regarding public participation, any member of the public wanting to make a comment to the board must complete a form between 6:30 to just before the 7 p.m. start time for the open session.

Beginning in July, the board changed its meeting format for the initial meeting of the month by moving its executive session behind closed doors to directly after the meeting begins at 6 p.m. with the intention it conclude by 7 p.m. or shortly thereafter. Then, the open session begins.

Monday's meeting will be at the district office, 1345 Wilson Hall Road.

For those not physically attending, the district continues to broadcast meetings live on YouTube.

Anyone wanting to attend the meeting virtually can do so via YouTube Sumter School District Board Meeting and the district's Facebook page, @SumterSCSchools.