Lee faces 1 challenger in Smith in new Sumter School District Board of Trustees District 7 race
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the final story in a series on the nine Sumter school board district seats that are up for election on Tuesday. Each week leading up to Election Day, The Sumter Item has analyzed a district (alternatively called area) race and interviewed candidates on the ballot. All candidates were contacted. Online, this series, like other election information, is free to read as a public service. Candidate Q&As in their own words were included in our Vote 2022 Guide that was published in the Oct. 1-3 Weekend edition.
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THE DISTRICT 7 RACE
This week we conclude the series with the new District 7 race. The district contains northcentral portions of Sumter County below the Lee County line and includes the Oswego community before converging south onto the downtown area with the new Districts 9 and 3. Major roads in District 7 include Dubose Siding Road, U.S. 15 North, Oswego Highway, Bell Road, East Foxworth Mill Road, U.S. 76 (Florence Highway) and East Brewington Road. The Mayesville area sits just east outside of District 7 in the new District 4.
Two candidates filed and remain in the race: incumbent Gloria Lee and Shery Smith.
GLORIA LEE
A Sumter native, Lee won the lone school board race on the ballot in November 2020 for the former Area 6 seat after then-Chairman Ralph Canty did not seek re-election.
She is a member of the board's Policy Committee, which is chaired by fellow trustee Brian Alston. Lee is also a member of the voting bloc on the board that includes Alston, outgoing trustee Barbara Jackson and Shawn Ragin. That group was in support of keeping former Superintendent Penelope Martin-Knox as the district's leader earlier this year and was on the minority side of the board's 5-4 split vote on the issue.
As far as qualifications, she noted that she was initially elected two years ago, is "a communicator," a parent of two children and also noted her vocational skills.
Lee is a re-entry and rehabilitative services program coordinator at maximum-security prison Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville. In that role, she said, she supervises a staff of four and teaches mandatory life skills classes to all inmates at the institution. Those courses include violence prevention, cultural awareness and time management, among others, to keep recidivism rates low. Her position works in tandem with the prison's education department that helps inmates earn their high school diploma/GED.
"I enjoy what I do," Lee said, "and I love seeing a great outcome of them leaving and calling me back and saying, 'I have a job.'"
She is also co-pastor of Fourth Cross Road Baptist Church in Manning, serving primarily in crisis ministry now, she said.
Regarding the district's challenges, Lee noted student discipline as the top priority, finances to include additional support from Sumter County Council and teacher/staff shortages.
When asked why the board did not directly address discipline as a major topic under Martin-Knox, Lee said she was not a trustee until basically January 2021, and at the time, students were not present as much in the schools causing disturbances because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coming onto the board required "a big learning curve," she added, but Lee said she has learned from all the trustees.
"Until you are actually in the hot seat of what is really going on and trying to do what is best, it is definitely a learning curve," Lee said. "I have learned a great deal. I have learned from every one of the board members. Each board member I have learned something from, and I took the positive. I didn't sit around and marinate on any negative. I took the positive."
Lee's two children graduated from Sumter High School.
SHERY SMITH
Originally from Sumter, Smith moved back here and has spent most of her adult life in Sumter.
She is one of several candidates who thinks the school board needs "wholesale changes" in its composition of members.
Before district consolidation in 2011, Smith was recommended by the local legislative delegation and appointed by the governor to serve as a replacement on the Sumter School District 2 Board of Trustees when current trustee Daryl McGhaney was elected to the new consolidated board. She served in the role for almost six months before the official, county-wide consolidation on July 1, 2011.
A legal assistant specializing in immigration law, Smith said she has a diverse background that includes being a corporate troubleshooter with a medical equipment company, specializing in the collections area. That position required her to use critical-thinking skills and implement changes at site locations that had been unsuccessful in their collections.
"We had failing locations that were putting equipment out, but they were not able to get paid because they were not following the right protocols," Smith said. "So, I went in and analyzed what each location's problems were, set out a plan to fix it, and put it in place. Later on - three to five months later - if things had not improved, which was not frequently necessarily, it was because people did not follow the plan. So, I would go back and re-educate the employees at that location on 'This is the process. If you follow this process, you will be successful.'
"Nine times out of 10, issues were corrected, and they became successful and prosperous locations."
She added the school board has "passive board members" and it needs people with a backbone.
Her work experience also includes human resources skills, employee management and budgeting. She additionally has advanced skills in Spanish, Smith said.
Through conversations with parents, grandparents, children and teachers in her campaign, she said people have told her that they want changes, such as increased pay for staff members and improving student discipline/school safety. She noted fighting in schools, bullying and a lack of consequences for students.
"We have got to address the actual needs of everybody involved with the school district," she said. "Going door to door, people tell me they want change. You cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different or better result. Therefore, we have got to make a change, and I want to be that change, can be that change for the Sumter school board."
Smith is also for a line-item review of the district's budget, she added.
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HOW DID WE GET HERE?
All nine seats on Sumter School District's Board of Trustees are on the ballot in the November midterm election.
After the district's financial crisis became apparent in December 2016, the Sumter County Legislative Delegation added two seats to the seven-member school board in spring 2017. The delegation's purpose then in creating the new "at-large" county seats on the board was to bring additional focus and expertise to remedy the district's challenge.
Without an election that year, the delegation appointed the two trustees to the board, expanding it to nine members. In November 2018, these new at-large seats went up for the public's vote for the first time. Being at-large seats, every voter in Sumter County saw the race on the ballot, and the top two vote-getters won the seats.
Frank Baker and Shawn Ragin won those two seats and have served four years.
The delegation specified in the original legislation that after the 2020 U.S. Census' redistricting to account for population shifts, the school board would switch to nine single-member districts for the 2022 election and moving forward. This spring, the delegation had General Assembly staff members who handled state redistricting also reconfigure Sumter County's seven districts into nine. Law requires electoral districts to encompass equal populations in each.
That means while you may not have moved since the last election, you may vote in a different district than previously. Voters can research sample ballots online at scvotes.org or learn more in The Sumter Item's Vote 2022 special guide that published Oct. 1. All Sumter County voters also received a new voter registration card detailing their districts.
The financial challenges of 2016-17 are resolved now largely because of the work of district staff and administration as well as attrition.
Meanwhile, the board that took over in late 2018 - which includes Baker who was the superintendent in 2016 before retiring in 2017 - has been often controversial because of its own actions and internal divisions.
Those started with voting to reopen a closed school and subsequently the state Superintendent of Education declaring a "fiscal emergency" in the district in spring 2019. More recently, the board voted 5-4 to remove the last district superintendent after unanimously naming her to the post three years earlier. The vote appeared to violate Penelope Martin-Knox's contract that required her termination to be approved by a supermajority, which would have been six votes. A judge also found the vote was illegal because the surprise motion was not on the agenda, meaning it violated the Freedom of Information Act.
Special interests tend to dominate the board's activity and conversations over policy and student and staff achievement and wellness, even while public education faces increased competition in recent years with growing educational options available to parents and families. Add onto that a nationwide teacher shortage.
All those factors set the stage for the upcoming election.