Incumbent McLeod faces 2 challengers in new Sumter School District 6 race
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the seventh 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 6 RACE
The new District 6, also referred to as Area 6, contains areas just south and west of the City of Sumter and includes the Privateer area of Sumter County. Major roadways include the western portion of McCrays Mill Road, Pinewood Road, Kolb Road and Bethel Church Road. A northern boundary to District 6 is Wedgefield Road, and a western boundary line is St. Pauls Church Road. An eastern boundary is U.S. 15 South. Southern boundary lines include Avin Road and Poole Road.
Three candidates filed and remain in the race: incumbent Matthew "Mac" McLeod and challengers Venitia Reebel and Robby Robinson.
MATTHEW 'MAC' MCLEOD
McLeod is in his 11th year as a teacher at Thomas Sumter Academy in the Dalzell/Rembert area and is one of three private school educators who serve on the school board. The others are Shawn Ragin and Brian Alston.
His wife, Jade McLeod, is the district's executive director of academics, which is a high-level position in the district office. She was promoted to the post in 2016 by former superintendent and now fellow trustee Frank Baker.
A Sumter native, McLeod previously served about 5.5 years as a trustee on the former Sumter School District 2 board before two school districts locally consolidated into one in 2011. Baker was also the longtime superintendent of Sumter District 2 before the 2011 merger.
McLeod chose not to run for the consolidated district's board then but won a seat on the board four years ago in November 2018.
He was part of the five-member changeover in the board at the time and voted to reopen Mayewood Middle School in 2019 less than one year after it was closed by the previous board. After the vote, state Superintendent Molly Spearman placed the district on a fiscal emergency declaration. Then, essentially the same board members voted to appeal Spearman's declaration to the state Board of Education, racking up attorney fees. In the spring of 2019, the state board voted unanimously in support of Spearman.
McLeod said he still stands behind his vote to reopen Mayewood at the beginning of his term, saying more research should have been done on the transition of the middle schoolers to R.E. Davis College Preparatory Academy before the closure vote was taken. He noted cost issues with modifications that have needed to be made at R.E. Davis.
Given the fiscal emergency declaration, financial matters dominated the board's discussion for the next several months, and a technical high school concept associated with Central Carolina Technical College essentially was dropped as a discussion topic. McLeod said he would be for revisiting that concept now.
Regarding rezoning attendance lines earlier this year, McLeod voted against the implementation of district realignment beginning next school year. It passed with a 5-4 split vote of the board. He said he thinks the realignment issue needs to be looked into further before implementation, given it will require rerouting buses and moving teachers and administrators to other schools.
"It's a lot bigger process than just taking students from one school to another," he said.
In addition to being a teacher, McLeod also runs a small business on the side, and he thinks that allows him to look at issues from multiple vantage points.
"I can look at things from both sides - from a business point of view and an education point of view - and I think that gives me more insight than those who have just been on the outside looking in," he said.
McLeod also pointed out his local roots that allow him to understand the community, his nine years of experience as a trustee on two different school boards and that he is open to input from the community.
Classroom discipline issues are the district's biggest challenge currently, McLeod said, but he thinks new Superintendent William Wright Jr. has the experience, skills and ability to get those issues under control going forward.
McLeod's two children are Lakewood High School graduates, and he has a grandson who attends Pocalla Springs Elementary School, he said.
VENITIA REEBEL
A private school teacher at a Christian school based in Florence County, Reebel has split her life between Texas and Sumter. She returned to Sumter a little more than three years ago and her 16-year-old son attends school where she teaches, and they find that most beneficial, Reebel said.
Her focus area is high school social studies to include U.S. history, world history and a dual enrollment course at the school through Francis Marion University in Florence. She has served in education for about 12 years, she said.
Education is a passion of hers, and Reebel favors instruction to be rigorous, emphasizing critical-thinking skills, morals and virtues and within a Classical learning environment, similar to the Greeks.
"It's going back to the original liberal arts education, like the Founding Fathers in the way that they were taught," Reebel said.
As far as qualifications, she said potential board members should not approach the role from a business standpoint, per se.
"It's almost coming at it like kids are like products," she said, "and, well, I disagree with that - children are not products. We should be helping our students have a more foundational education so that ultimately they want to give back and help our community as a whole."
As far as challenges in the district, Reebel noted safety and having a productive learning environment. She also mentioned local and state achievement levels for students.
With regard to successes, Reebel noted the district's STEM-certified schools and replicating those efforts wherever possible.
Overall, she said, she is for "positive change" for our schools.
"Education should be at the forefront of everything that we are doing, especially in our community," she said. "And it's a community effort. It's not just about the school board. It's about all of us getting involved and supporting the schools and our students. Just like a love that about Liberty STEAM Charter School and they are talking about that and changing the community's culture. And I think that is what we need to do here as well, just on a larger scale."
This is Reebel's first time running for political office.
ROBBY ROBINSON
A Virginia native, Robinson is a retired U.S. Air Force veteran and has been in Sumter since 2003.
For 13 years after the military, from 1999 to 2012, he was a small-business owner of a computer repairs/service company with stores in Sumter, Manning and also England, he said.
Robinson has also been involved in community service, serving on the advisory council for the local Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club and also for Sumter Senior Services.
He is direct when it comes to the district's challenges and what should be priorities for moving forward. Those include building board transparency, classroom discipline issues and school safety concerns.
For example, the board is just discussing now about putting metal detectors in district schools, starting with the three high schools, and that is an issue "that should have been at the forefront years ago," given national events involving weapons in schools.
He added the current discipline policy requires several major infractions by a child before he/she can be expelled. That creates unnecessary burdens on classroom teachers, who have to spend inordinate amounts of time on a small percentage of students.
The school board is on its fifth superintendent in 11 years and let its last superintendent - Penelope Martin-Knox - go after unanimously appointing her to the position in 2019.
A father of four, Robinson said two of his children are Lakewood High School graduates and he has two grandchildren at Alice Drive Elementary School.
He is also for a line-by-line review of budget items to check for inefficiencies and mismanagement of funds, he said. This is Robinson's first venture running for a political office.
He said he thinks because he has children who have graduated from the district and grandchildren in the district, that makes him an appropriate voice in the local community. Additionally, his small business background is an asset in his qualifications.
"I feel that I have a better administrative way of doing things to get things moving forward for improving our schools than the current school board representative for District 6," Robinson said. "Also, in being part of the community and serving on boards, I understand what is involved in working with others to accomplish a single goal."
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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 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 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.