Early voting for the general primary election will begin Monday, April 27 and continue through Friday, May 15 at the Oglethorpe County Board of Elections at 41 Fairground Road in Lexington. Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be two Saturdays of early voting: May 2 and May 9.
Jenny Wisham and Thomas Carroll are both running on the Republican ticket for the Oglethorpe County Board of Education for District 5.
Wisham is a physical therapist who works in home health care. She is a graduate of Oglethorpe County High School and has lived in the county since she was in third grade. The mother of three has a child in each of the schools.
Carroll is a physics graduate student at the University of Georgia who resides in Oglethorpe County.
Becky Soto, the current District 5 representative and BOE chair, decided not to run for reelection this year.
The Oglethorpe Echo spoke to both candidates to discuss goals and top priorities ahead of the primary election on May 19.
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What experience do you have that would help you in this role?
Wisham: I have three kids in the school system, so I've been very involved ever since my first one started. I’ve helped with PTO at the primary, elementary school and the middle school, and I’m currently helping with the athletic booster club at the high school. So, I have a lot of experience just volunteering and serving in all of the schools.
Carroll: So leadership wise, a lot of time in the Marine Corps. I’m a captain and an infantry officer; leadership where we have to creatively solve problems and not accept unacceptable solutions over end results. In this case, where (only) 36% of our third graders are proficient at reading, we have to find new solutions. We have to. We can’t accept those numbers. We have to find a new solution that solves that problem.
Q: What are your top priorities as a BOE member?
Wisham: No. 1, I just would love for every single student in the school to have the opportunity to achieve their goals, whatever that may be. And then another thing that I would really like to see is the facilities being improved, specifically at the high school.
Carroll: One is quality education. As we mentioned, the proficiency numbers are not good. They’re unacceptable across the board; we have to take care of that. No. 2 is money. So the school system has a $2.85 million deficit this year. Now taxes have gone up significantly in the past several years. Seventy-six percent of what we pay to the county goes to the school system alone, and yet we have this giant deficit. That’s not OK. We have to balance the budget. We have to cut costs.
Q: What role should the board play in supporting school administrators, staff and students?
Wisham: I think the role of the board of education is to set the direction for the school, to set the policies and the budget to help the schools be as successful as possible. I think being on the board, I want to be able to serve the teachers and just provide them with what they need in order to be successful, and then allow the students to be successful.
Carroll: One, resources and safety. Both of those are just a flat-out requirement. At the same time, we have to uphold standards. So, if somebody that works there is not upholding a standard, the administration should have the ability to hopefully correct it, coach them, make them better and, eventually, if they’re not able to perform the standard, go a different direction. But top priority, though, is resources and safety.
Q: What are the most pressing issues for the school system at this time? And, how are you planning to address these issues?
Wisham: I guess maybe looking at the budget. I know that’s a big part of what the board does, and so I know it’s tough being at a small school system. We don’t have the resources in the budget that surrounding schools have, so just being good stewards of the resources and the money that we have.
Carroll: Proficiency. That’s one we have to address through the administration, through the superintendent, directly and say, ‘We need a different game plan.’ We can’t send kids off into the world as young adults that don’t know how to read and write. At the same time, we can’t keep taking more money from the citizens, from the taxpayers and putting out this bad product. We also need something along the lines of a senior tax exemption. Right now, we have a lot of senior citizens that are being taxed off the property they’ve lived on their whole life, but it’s for the school system that has not a balanced budget, a $3 million deficit. Those two things don’t add up.
Q: What growth or change would you like to see in the Oglethorpe County School System?
Wisham: The school is growing, the population and the (number of) kids are growing. I think the school has improved a lot over the years. I’m excited to just be on the board and help with that, continue to grow the school and improve the school, with the athletics and with academics, just trying to achieve the highest goals possible and being the best school system in the area.
Carroll: No. 1 is education quality. But growth wise, I do think we need new facilities for a lot of things. The high school is old and in disrepair, much like the elementary school we just replaced. Now, it’s not easy and tax money isn’t necessarily the solution to that. We need to find a new, creative way to fix that problem, partnering with businesses and also taking educational opportunities from that partnership.
Q: How would you define a successful school system?
Wisham: I think ours is successful in the sense that, with us being such a small school, our kids are known and loved. And I think being successful means that they are able to have the opportunity to achieve what they want to achieve, whether that's going to college or getting a job. And I think the school really looks at each kid individually to help them reach that goal. In the school, I would love for all of our kids to love Oglethorpe County and want to graduate and move on and eventually come back to raise their kids here. So I think that is a big indicator of the success of the school is that the kids want to come back and raise their family here in the county.
Carroll: One where the proficiency rates and the graduation rates are both high and equal. Right now, those two things are not equal, which doesn’t make sense. How do we send a young adult off in the world that’s not proficient and ready for their college or career as defined by the state? The numbers need to come up. In general, our proficiency numbers are too low and a balanced budget seems like a non sequitur. We can’t spend more money than we bring in.