Are all Lexington 1 schools treated the same? Here’s what the school board candidates say
One of the Midlands’ biggest school districts is growing, but to listen to many of the people who want to sit on its board for the next four years, it’s falling behind in its level of services to students and its competitiveness in attracting teachers.
Lexington 1 has its choice of nine people running for four seats on the school board for the district, which covers the central part of Lexington County from the south shoreline of Lake Murray through the town of Lexington and out to Gilbert and Pelion.
Two incumbents, Mike Anderson and Kathy Henson, are running for re-election, while two other incumbents, Brent Powers and current board chair Anne Marie Green are stepping down this year. The candidates to replace them include McKenzie Flashnick, Dana Homesley, Nicholas Pizzuti, Mariel Taylor, David Terry, Scott Whetstone and Shelton Yonce. All four seats will be elected at-large district-wide.
The challengers say they want to see more done to address discrepancies between classrooms in different parts of the district, competitiveness when it comes to teacher pay, and to better focus on students’ needs .
Anderson, a two-term incumbent on the board, said newcomers to the board should temper their expectations.
“You might think you’d know what you’d like to see done, but it’s not at all like you think,” Anderson said. “You are one of seven people, so you alone are not going to affect much change. You have to work with people.”
Henson, who is seeking her second term, said the district has taken steps to make its salaries more competitive, including convening a salary committee of principals, teachers and other staff to study the issue. But 90% of the district’s current budget is dedicated to salaries and other benefits for employees.
“So our number one priority is to pay our employees and pay them well so they want to come and want to stay,” Henson said.
Some have said the district must address disparities between different schools and different parts of the district.
”On the southern side of the community, if you look at the academic report cards, we see those schools are constantly struggling,” Yonce, a real estate agent, said at an Oct. 21 candidate forum, circling the rural areas of the district that feed into Gilbert, Pelion and White Knoll high schools. “We need to get prioritized to where these guys can get more funding and more help.”
Pizzuti, who oversees local government services for the S.C. Department of Transportation, grew in a family of teachers in Gilbert, and has seen the effect growth in the area has had on local schools.
“We’re a 4A school in Gilbert working out of 2A facilities,” he said at an Oct. 17 candidate forum at River Bluff High School.
“Fairness in funding is very important to me as well, and we don’t have that currently in Lexington 1,” said Dana Homesley, a claims adjuster. She was one of several candidates who said they would like to see an audit of the district’s finances. “The district doesn’t have a funding problem, it has a spending problem. We need to make sure money goes directly back into the classroom.”
Taylor, who works for Gordian Construction, wants to see more funding directed to the students who need it the most, like those with special needs or learning English as a second language.
Flashnick touted her experience managing a large budget as head of the sales department at Gray Television. But she also wants to ensure students are getting access to the resources they need.
“There’s supposed to be a state mental health counselor or psychologist in each school a couple of times a week,” she said. “But the students I talked to had no idea that was available to them.”
Anderson said he thinks the district has taken steps to address outlying areas, many of which are experiencing the fastest growth in the district.
“We spend a tremendous amount of money in Pelion,” Anderson said. “We’ve put water and sewer out to Pelion to facilitate a great deal of growth. Gilbert’s the same way. Gilbert is growing faster than any other area, we’re going to have to build more schools.”
Pizzuti said he wants to put guarantees in place so that teachers “actually get unencumbered time for a free planning period that they don’t have to go to any type of professional development or cover somebody else’s class or anything that doesn’t pertain to their planning time.”
“There’s way too much paperwork that has just put them a huge burden on them,” he said at the River Bluff forum.
Terry, a project manager for Johnson and Leslie Construction, told questioners at that same forum that the district should look at administrative staff when looking for places to find savings.
“We’ve got a lot of people in the district office that don’t directly work with kids on a daily basis, that are taking a teacher salary or two or three or four potentially, and they’re just kind of there,” Terry said. “Currently, we’ve got two superintendents, and we’re paying them both like superintendents, and that’s a whole lot of money for nobody to really have accountability this year.”
Last spring, Lexington 1 hired former Georgetown County superintendent Keith Price to the position of “superintendent-elect,” to spend a year working under current Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait before taking over the district when Postlewait retires next summer.
Whetstone, who is running for the Lexington 1 board after seeing his bid for re-election to Lexington County Council end in this summer’s Republican primary, didn’t attend the recent candidate forums and didn’t respond to The State’s request for comment.
This story was originally published October 28, 2024 at 12:11 PM.
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