Local & State Headlines

Culbreath talks on school board

• "Noses in, fingers out" is one piece of advice prospective school board members are given at a Wednesday forum.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — In a active election year with some 19 school board seats, including four in Dougherty, coming open around metro Albany, prospective candidates learned Wednesday that a board member’s power comes with many responsibilities and many constraints.

“Board members should have their noses in, and their fingers out,” to avoid experiences such as that in Clayton County, where the school system faces the loss of its accreditation and the resignation of several board members, Bill Sampson of the Georgia School Boards Association said at a “candidates forum” hosted Wednesday by the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce.

Members have four roles, that of creating a vision, structuring that vision, accountability and advocacy, said Sampson, a retired superintendent of systems in Lee, Crisp and Cook counties.

Board members who become personally involved in school affairs risk the worst-case situation in Clayton, where the system may lose its accreditation and realtors are clamoring about falling property values “because of acts that individual school board members have done,” Sampson said.

Only two employees — the superintendent and school board attorney — are hired directly by the board, he said. All others are hired with the superintendent’s approval.

The board must recruit, hire and evaluate the superintendent, he said.

While a board determines goals for the system, its members “need to speak with one voice to the superintendent” on implementing those goals, saying “what” instead of “how” things are done, he said.

Individually, a board member has “to be an advocate of public school,” Sampson said.

A member’s power, however, exists “only when you are sitting together with the rest of the board,” he said.

Board members are elected from districts to a panel that serves every child in the system, said John Culbreath, former Dougherty Superintendent of Schools, who introduced participants to the complexities of school finance.

Only one sitting school board member, Dougherty County’s David Maschke, was among the nine who attended the forum.

Board members who take office may be surprised to learn how little freedom a system has to spend tax dollars, Culbreath said.

“Everything you believe that’s important, beyond what the state and federal government believes is important, you believe you’re going to pay for it,” he said.

In a $100 million budget, for example, a system might have $5 million that is not restricted by a formula to instructional costs, such as teacher salaries, he said.

And the local tax-dollar contribution is almost guaranteed to be about 40 percent, he said.

Participant Chuck Darsey asked how a board member who by necessity works full-time can know how much time to give to the position.

“The balancing act,” Sampson said, “is one that each person has to come to grips with.”

No one had declared the intent to run a campaign or accept campaign contributions in any of the five counties Wednesday, officials in the elections offices of each said.

Party qualifying for partisan school board posts coming open in Dougherty, Worth, Terrell and Baker counties is April 28-May 2.

Qualifying for Lee County’s nonpartisan school board elections is the week of June 23-27.

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