Dear Editor,
Over the past 24 years, my wife Kathy and I have dedicated more than 30,000 hours, raised millions of dollars, and donated considerable personal funds while working with and for Greene County’s school children. During that time, we founded the Greensboro Dreamers (60 Minutes feature in 2004), REACH College Scholarships with Beth Thomas (35 to date), and the Learn to Read/Read to Learn Program at Greene County Primary School while also mentoring some outstanding high school students (Kathy).
During those years, we experienced many challenges, failures, changes, and success stories. Since the current Board of Education election is upon us, I am compelled to share some of my experiences based on personal opinions and recommendations.
Greene County Schools
The Dreamers will be forever grateful to have had the incredibly talented Dr. Joan Antone as principal of Greensboro Primary School when our program started with first graders in 2000. At that time, and for too many years, chaos and incompetence were the norm at the middle school and high school.
Fortunately, much progress has been achieved in recent years. Some reasons for this improvement are the elimination of social promotions, reduced turnover of good teachers, improved student discipline, countless contributions from many education-focused volunteer organizations, a new director of teaching and learning, the Greene College and Career Academy, and previous BOE Chairman Mike Lynch’s results-driven strategic plan (with considerable county-wide citizen input).
Though further significant improvements are definitely needed, substantial progress in recent years compared to Georgia’s other public schools has been verified by many Georgia Department of Education measures.
Lake Oconee Academy
While still an outstanding public charter school, it recently has moved from first to last place (6th) among Georgia’s high-performing charter schools. With Dr. Brad Bowling as the new executive director, LOA is expected to regain its number-one ranking.
Hypocrisy
For many years, Dr. Tucker compared LOA’s performance to the rest of Greene County’s students while ignoring the challenges their economically disadvantaged student population faced. Now that LOA has modestly increased its disadvantaged student population, he is blaming that increase for LOA coming in last compared to the other high-performing public charter schools.
Buying Our Local Election
Otho Tucker, Maggie Combs, and Mark Lipscomb will raise and spend historically high campaign funds, exceeding $300,000 (Combs publicly bragged about having raised $114K for her campaign more than two months ago). Hopefully, endless expensive billboard ads, flyers, and mailings will not be the determining factor in this election.
Misinformation
The three challengers (Tucker, Combs, and Lipscomb) falsely claim that the incumbents (Lee, Kjer, and Bashore) plan to shut down LOA – an unfounded scare tactic.
LOA’s Lottery
The prioritization of 42 families’ children jumping to the front of the wait list admissions line has yet to be explained, other than referring to quasi-part-time employee parents as justification. Some of those employee parents had not started working, and others worked as little as a few hours once their children were admitted. This process insults taxpayers, particularly the families still on the waiting list.
Two questions come to mind:
1. Was there a quid pro quo, and who specifically benefitted?
2. Longtime LOA Board of Governors Chairman Mark Lipscomb, challenging incumbent Joe Bashore in District 2, stated he did not know about the enrollment of part-time employees’ children.
That calls into question his credibility and competence. An independent investigation of the entire LOA lottery process is needed.
Education-Focused Greene County Non-Profits
Challenger Maggie Combs said the BOE needs to direct and coordinate our non-profits' plans, priorities, and processes. We need appreciation and support, not more bureaucracy! Top-down government interference across our country is out of control. We don’t need to bring it to our local school system.
Closing Comment
Greene County’s citizens should vote for the Board of Education candidates who will prioritize the interests of ALL of our students.
Therefore, I recommend voting for our very effective team of incumbents (marked on the ballots): Dr. Perry Lee—countywide; Dr. Maggie Kjer—district 4; Mr. Joe Bashore—district 2.
Early voting is from April 29 through May 17, and Election Day is May 21.
Respectfully, Tom Kelly Greene County