GREENE COUNTY
Monday night’s meeting of the Lake Oconee Board of Governors was Dr. Otho Tucker’s last as Chief Executive Officer of Greene County’s only charter school.
Tucker has been CEO since the school started 16 years ago. He announced last year he would step down at the end of this school year. At the May board meeting, Dr. Brad Bowling was selected to take over as what will now be called Executive Director.
The board was expected to announce on Monday that Tucker will continue in an advisory role at LOA, but Board Chairman Michael Tompkins said a deal had not been completed.
“I won’t be in day-to-day operations of the school,” Tucker told the Lake Oconee News in May. “I’ll advise as I can on any issues they feel they need me for and any future issues.”
The board announced that Kim Larkin, who has served on the board of governors for the past 16 years, resigned one year short of her current term.
She said that her job as director of clinical services and strategic partnership for a medical device company has always involved a lot of travel, so her husband had taken on the role of running the household.
With one son who just graduated from LOA and another son who is a rising junior at LOA, she wanted to cut back on outside commitments while continuing with her career.
Tucker suggested that the board must fill Larkin’s vacancy, and it would be a good time to consider further diversifying.
“We need to really be looking for, as our Hispanic population grows, someone to represent that population on this board,” he said.
Bowling and the board have a lot on their plate.
Bowling, who has an extensive education resume, has only worked at LOA for the past year and must, with Tucker’s help, get up to speed on an approximately $15.5 million budget and how to continue to keep the educational achievements high.
In April, LOA submitted to the Greene County Board of Education an application for a renewal of its charter, which expires at the end of the next school year.
Tucker told the Lake Oconee News that the BOE has 90 days to respond. BOE Chairman Perry Lee, who attended Monday’s meeting, said they are still working on it but would not reveal any details. When there’s an agreement, it must be approved by the state.
Considering the two boards just settled a more than a two-year-long lawsuit, resentment is still high. Also, the BOE changed its operation to a total charter school system, leaving questions about what impact that would have on LOA as a separate charter school that is still part of the Greene County school district.
Also at Monday night’s LOA Board meeting:
• Tucker said that there are 341 applications on the waiting list for enrollment at LOA next year. Twenty-four of them are priority students who are children of employees or siblings of children already attending LOA. He said that the chance of even the priority students being enrolled is “slim.”
• The agenda item that would designate LOA as a smoke-free campus was withdrawn by Tucker, who said they need to see what other school districts are doing, especially in related areas such as electronic cigarettes.
• Tucker also reported that of the 64 graduating seniors at LOA, 61 have been accepted to a college, two will enlist in the military and one will enter the workforce.