ST. MATTHEWS – Dr. Ernest “Bucky” Stokes Jr., a former Calhoun County School District superintendent, has announced his candidacy for the nonpartisan District 4 seat on the Calhoun County School Board in the Nov. 4 general election.

Stokes is challenging incumbent trustee Michael Drake, who is seeking his third four-year term.

Also seeking the seat is Joyce Jones Parrish, a former principal.

After 21 years with the school district, Stokes resigned in 1993. Questions over the handling of a multi-million-dollar school construction plan, he says, led him to seek the District 4 seat. The key issue of his campaign, he says, is to ensure that the school board includes parents, teachers, students and the business community in the goal-setting planning process. That team effort, he says, was absent when the board majority, including Drake, voted for a school expansion project without the public’s approval, via referendum.

“Sadly, Calhoun County taxpayers and public school parents have been denied the right to participate in the process of deciding how their money is to be spent and what is best for their children and ours,” he said. “In November 2006, a deeply divided school board voted 3-2 to abandon (the public’s) interests, and adopted a controversial $35 million school expansion project without seeking taxpayer permission or participation.”

The “intended net effect of this decision,” Stokes says, was to close John Ford Middle and Guinyard Elementary schools, “displacing students and teachers, and relocating them to a new K-8 school now under construction across from Calhoun County High School.” Without the public’s approval and input into goal setting, he says, this “costly expansion project” is not a “people’s plan” and has been flawed from the outset.

“The board vote conveyed our school facilities over to the South Carolina Association of Governmental Organizations, effectively pawning our schools and forcing us to buy them back using a 25-year installment purchase plan that saddled three generations of Calhoun County taxpayers with a $60 million mortgage,” Stokes said.

Although the school construction plan will proceed, Stokes says it’s not too late for the board to change course and start “using people power to get things done in our schools – not just in facility planning, but in academic achievement, curriculum and instruction, student control, budget development and school-community relations.”

He calls for a utilization plan for both John Ford and Guinyard schools that relies on public input from stakeholders.

“Parents, teachers, homeowners, small business owners, professionals, corporate executives, retirees, young voters, ‘choice’ proponents – taxpayers all – are the stakeholders in the business of our public schools and (they) deserve to stand up and be counted,” Stokes said. “Success in education must be the confidence of the public. (The public) must be heard.”

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