McGhaney faces 3 challengers for Sumter school board District 4 seat
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series on the nine Sumter school board district seats that are up for election in November. Each week leading up to Election Day, The Sumter Item will analyze a district (alternatively called area) race and interview candidates on the ballot. All candidates will be contacted. Online, this series, like other election information, will be 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 4 RACE
The new District 4, also referred to as Area 4, is primarily the rural, eastern portion of Sumter County heading toward Interstate 95. A western boundary is U.S. 15 South and the Lakewood area, and the district includes Myrtle Beach Highway, Mayesville and Shiloh. The eastern portion of the district goes until the Florence County line. Lee County is to the north, and Turbeville and Clarendon County are to the south.
Four candidates filed and remain in the race: incumbent Daryl McGhaney and challengers Tarah Cousar Johnson, Monica Squires and Leon Winn.
DARYL MCGHANEY
McGhaney is the lone board member to serve all 11 years since consolidation in 2011. Sumter School District is on the fifth superintendent in that timeframe, including an interim leader who served two years.
A Sumter native and Lynchburg resident, McGhaney voted for Randy Bynum to be the consolidated district's first superintendent. The board vote was 5-2 to appoint Bynum, who served two volatile years before resigning in 2013.
McGhaney only took emailed questions from The Item on Thursday for an interview request and said in response to the Bynum question that he also supported the subsequent appointments of Frank Baker, Brenda Hamm, Penelope Martin-Knox and currently William Wright Jr. to the head post.
Before serving on the consolidated board, he served one term on the former Sumter School District 2 board when Baker was the superintendent.
He is a close ally of Baker and generally part of the voting bloc that includes himself, Baker, Matthew "Mac" McLeod and Sherril Ray.
Regarding qualifications for the board, McGhaney said he is a product of the public schools of Sumter County and has lived in the eastern portion of the county his entire life. His community service also includes being a volunteer firefighter, Rotary Club of Sumter Sunrise member and a member of Gate City Masonic Lodge No. 276 in Florence.
His wife, Vivian Fleming-McGhaney, was a long-time school district employee before retiring at the end of last school year as the special education curriculum coordinator.
He was put in the local spotlight this year for his surprise motion at the end of a Feb. 28 Board of Trustees' meeting to effectively tell Martin-Knox to walk away from her post immediately with the rest of her pay four months before her contract was supposed to end June 30. The motion passed by a 5-4 split vote. The vote violated 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 motion was not on the agenda, meaning it violated the Freedom of Information Act, a situation revealed by reporting in The Sumter Item. Martin-Knox afterward returned to her position in March after a vote by the board and concluded her contract.
Further FOIA-based investigation by the newspaper discovered that six days before the Feb. 28 board meeting, Martin-Knox informed Vivian Fleming-McGhaney in a meeting that she had eliminated her position as a working retiree and that her last day of employment would be June 30.
The surprise motion by McGhaney was not an isolated incident for the trustee. In November 2013, McGhaney offered up a similar motion in a board meeting to name Baker the full-time superintendent. At the time, he was the interim leader after Bynum's exit.
The motion passed in a 4-3 split vote, but The Item did not further investigate that incident at the time.
When asked this week about those two motions, McGhaney responded that any board member has the privilege of making a motion before the board. However, the full board has the authority to accept or reject the motion by vote. Through the years, many motions have resulted in split votes, he added.
"In a democracy, the majority prevails and the minority is heard; therefore, all board members may not always agree on all things at all times," McGhaney wrote. "It is always my desire, regardless of perception, that the entire board would be able to vote unanimously on major issues that are indeed what is best for our esteemed Sumter School District."
In recent years, McGhaney voted against closing two low-enrollment schools in the district in 2018 (Mayewood Middle and F.J. DeLaine Elementary). That vote passed 5-3, and the schools closed at the end of the school year.
Less than one year later, he was in the majority on the 6-3 vote to reopen Mayewood, an action that placed the district on a fiscal emergency declaration by state Superintendent Molly Spearman. He also was part of the majority vote to appeal the declaration to the state Board of Education. The state board ruled unanimously in favor of Spearman.
McGhaney has served in ministry vocationally for 25 years. The last 23 years he has been senior pastor of Bethany Missionary Baptist Church in Sumter. He also worked 26 years in corrections before retiring a few years ago.
TARAH COUSAR JOHNSON
A native of Lynchburg in Sumter County, Johnson moved back home to live in the St. John/Shiloh community within the last two years.
She was an English teacher for 10 years at the former Mayewood High School in the eastern portion of the county and then moved to Crestwood High School in the late 1990s when it opened. Johnson served two years as an assistant principal at Crestwood and also was a part-time teacher at the school for those years.
At Mayewood, she was named a campus teacher of the year in the former Sumter School District 2, she said, and was appointed as the English department chair.
Johnson works currently in communications, planning and sales with a consumer goods company.
The current school board, "from appearances," does not seem to be putting students first, and instead the focus is on political or personal agendas, she said.
"I would not go so far as to say board members don't really care," Johnson said, "but I would definitely say from appearance - and that should be clear - from appearance, it just looks very political and looks very personal. And that is all you can go off of being on the outside looking in."
As far as qualifications, she said, her experience in the classroom and also in school administration helps her understand needs in both areas. Johnson possesses a passion for educational excellence, she added, in addition to her business experience.
"So, truly, it is all about the skill set that I bring," she said, "the passion that I have, and the business experience all tied in together to create a nice recipe for school board leadership."
She does not have children in the school district, but Johnson is the guardian for her nephew, who attends a district school.
Challenges in the district include the lack of trust and transparency with the school board, the teacher shortage and students' academic achievement levels.
As far as community involvement, she has served the last year as a board member for Shiloh Project Lift, an afterschool program that provides additional support for students in the community.
This is her first venture into politics, she added.
MONICA SQUIRES
A lifelong resident of Sumter County, Squires has 10 years of experience as a school board member previously. She served on the former Sumter School District 2 board from 2002 until consolidation in 2011. Then, she was elected to the consolidated district board for a one-year term. In 2012, she lost her seat in that year's election to outgoing Chairwoman Barbara Jackson, who is not seeking another term.
When on the new board in 2011, Squires voted against selecting Randy Bynum as the district's first superintendent. The seven-member board's vote was 5-2 in favor of Bynum, and he served two tumultuous years as the district leader before resigning in July 2013.
Squires said she did not feel he was the "right fit" for Sumter and was not the community's choice either.
She said she thinks her previous experience as a trustee helps qualify her for the seat and that the fact that she is a mother of two sons who graduated from Sumter School District also does. One son went to college and the other did not and are both successful in their careers, Squires said.
As far as challenges in the district, she noted student discipline, teacher retention and the division among the nine-member board. She added many in the Sumter community are upset with that division.
"I know you cannot always be agreeable and unanimous," Squires said, "but I just think a lot of people are not happy just out in the public. Every time I turn around, I hear somebody saying something negative about the school board and the district, and I don't like that."
She said she has not maintained any relationships with current board members and has "no hidden agendas" in seeking the office. She always has the time available now to serve.
"I bring a passion for education, and I listen and care," Squires said. "I am just doing this because I care about our children, our teachers and our town, and I want what is best for everyone."
LEON WINN
Winn, a bi-vocational pastor and former police officer, also said he thinks student discipline is a major issue in schools.
He said helping young people requires a "microscopic and telescopic look at our society."
The microscopic view is examining family and children and the background that kids are coming from and finding out how to change their way of thinking in a positive way.
"The telescopic look is we need to look more at where their future is going and how we can get them to realize they can have a brighter future," Winn said. "If you look at crime, there is a killing in Sumter almost every day. Our young people have lost the most essential thing in society, and that is hope. We need to bring back hope into the minds of our young people. It all starts at the home and at school."
He is a proponent of after-school programs and tutoring.
Winn spent 16 years in the U.S. Air Force reserves, and he said he thinks his qualifications include the fact that his three grown children went to college and are successful. Along those lines, he has a desire to see the betterment of all local children and thinks that takes structure in their lives and discipline.
Winn is no stranger to the political scene, having run three times for the state Senate District 36 seat, which he has lost each time, and once for Congressional District 6 in the U.S. House of Representatives. In that race, he lost in the primary.
"I don't give up in what I believe in," he added.
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.
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 are also receiving 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 the superintendent who was in charge in 2016 before he retired in 2017 then won an at-large seat - 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, a situation revealed by reporting in The Sumter Item.
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.