Special Note: The author would like to thank Keith Ball, Principal of Woodstock Middle School in Cherokee County, Georgia, for all the extra traffic he has been driving to this site.

If Mr. Ball referred you to this blog, please understand that his actions are the result of his personal vendetta against my fiancee’, Allison Burnes. For the record, Allison Burnes does not write, edit, approve, or support what is published here. I alone am responsible for this content.

Mr. Ball’s problem is with me, but he can’t seem to muster the courage to take me to task directly. Instead, he is referring all of Allison’s prospective employers here, hoping to sabotage her career by blaming my writings on her. It’s wrong, and you deserve to know his motives and the relevant facts. If you would like to read all of the articles related to Mr. Ball as of 2-15-2010, please use this link. The posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, so read from the bottom up. Thank you for visiting.

I am the least political person (more than 14 years of age) that I know or have ever known.  When a situation becomes so mind-bogglingly ridiculous as to motivate me to being politically conscious, it’s a true red letter day in my life.  Such is the situation with the Cherokee County School Board.

In the course of taking steps to deal with the situation with Keith Ball at Woodstock Middle School, it has become clear that there are equally serious problems elsewhere in the system.  To wit, the School Board members, collectively and individually, have shown a troubling lack of concern for the workings of the system they govern.

Last Monday, we attended a forum intended to allow residents of Cherokee County to meet the candidates for various offices prior to the election on July 15.  Sponsored by the Cherokee County Republican Women, the forum was not well organized and seemed a bit impromptu. For example, questions were collected from the attendees and were to be directed to a single candidate, but were then posed to all seven candidates.  Despite promises that all questions would be heard, most were discarded, including ours.

The candidates were game and entertaining, and I gathered some interesting first impressions.  Three seats on the board are up for re-election, and there are seven candidates for those seats.  Here are my opinions and impressions, summarized from notes I took that night.

Post 7:

Kim Cochran speaks well and seems comfortable discussing the role of a school board member.  She is a homemaker, mother, and former educator, the only trained and experienced teacher running in this election.   In fact, if elected, she will be the first teacher to serve.  She seems to take a common-sense approach to the questions.  She knows schools and education law well and has served on several school advisory boards.  She champions fiscally conservative policies and would keep control of the schools, to the extent possible, at the local level.

Wes Frye apparently phoned in his answers.  He was physically present, but had all the charisma of a profit-loss statement.  His answers generally followed the answers of others, and he had little to say that was original or interesting.  He’s been in the energy business and is a paralegal, a title examiner, an appraiser, and a real estate professional and has an associate degree in database management.  Despite 5 terms as PTA president and 5 terms as PTA vice-president, I can’t imagine this man being effective on the board.

Post 4:

Janet Read, the incumbent, came across as an infuriatingly smug, condescending woman who seems far better at talking than listening.  She presently works, from time to time, as a substitute teacher in the very school system she’s charged with governing.  My favorite quote of the evening from Read was in response to a question about personnel problems in the schools.  “It does no good to talk to me,” she admitted.  Truer words were never spoken.  She and Chapman, both incumbents,  seem to stick together and look out for each other.

David Farrow seems like a sensible fellow, but he doesn’t speak well.  He’s fascinated with numbers like dropout rates and graduation rates. He doesn’t seem to care where the numbers came from; he’s just intent on fixing them.  This is noble in itself, but unfortunately he’s neither convincing nor assertive in his statements.  Like Frye, he doesn’t present himself as leadership material.  In order to overcome those who would leave the broken system be, we need strong-willed people who don’t mind getting a little aggressive when necessary, and I don’t see Farrow having those qualities, as much as I may admire his accomplishments and his integrity.

Robert Strozier strikes me as a cross between Ross Perot and a pit bull.  He cuts right through the crap.  Like Perot, he came prepared with charts and graphs to dismiss the ridiculous idea put forth by the incumbents that our graduation rates aren’t bad.  The fact is that they’re terrible, and his data show this unequivocally.  Strozier speaks his mind with a refreshing frankness and isn’t afraid to deliver a few swift kicks to the status quo.  Strozier also plans to donate his school board salary back to the system, something no other candidate has mentioned.  His many stated goals include rewarding good teachers and making overtime a paid activity, not volunteer work as it is now in many cases.

Post 2:

Mike Chapman comes across as an arrogant, condescending, contentious, overly comfortable incumbent who seems to take his seat on the school board for granted.  To him, the questions were opportunities to crow about the school board’s past achievements as if they were his own.  He champions impartiality at the school board level, something I find completely ridiculous when a school system has personnel in place who are damaging it and the superintendent and his staff are not acting.   Chapman’s opponent was surprised to see him here, since he’d skipped the previous forum held at Cagle’s Dairy in June.  Chapman’s wife works as a teacher in this school system, and that’s a definite conflict of interest.  Chapman would either need to vote on his own wife’s salary or abstain from such a vote.  Neither would impress me.

Danny Dukes is a bit of a scrapper and took some shots at Chapman, mostly about Chapman’s attendance record at meetings and non-meeting school board functions.  Dukes has a lot of opinions about how we should fix the broken parts of this school system, and they make sense.  Rather than simply go along, as the incumbents have, with the “this is how we’ve always done it” conservative rhetoric, Dukes chooses to take aim at bad programs like “Math 1-2-3” which Georgia is forcing down the throats of local schools.  He’d like to see change, and I think he’s ready to bring some about.

Last night we attended another forum.  This one was solely for School Board candidates and was held at Woodstock High School, the school which shares a campus with Keith Ball’s current fiefdom, Woodstock Middle School.  This forum was also far more organized and was sponsored by the local PTA.

There weren’t many memorable quotes, other than the embarrassing moment when Farrow couldn’t remember whether the correct grammar was “…we must have done well” or “…we must have done good.”   Chapman did refer to matters that are outside the “purveyance” of the School Board, which made me chuckle.  By the definition of that word, the Board must think of themselves as royalty.

Dukes again came out with his … er … dukes up, landing a couple of blows on Chapman that seemed ineffective against his force-field of self-importance.  Nonetheless, his ideas and reasoning were sound and he offered well thought-out, meaningful answers.  Cochran again stood out as the calm, intelligent voice of reason.  Strozier spoke plainly and offered clear data and definite goals.  One of his goals was to “return non-value-added administrators to the classroom where they belong.”  Direct hit.

Frye again phoned it in.  Farrow bristled at what I thought was a rather sensible question about some land donated to the school system and responded angrily, which didn’t help his credibility.  Read remained smug and reversed herself on an earlier statement about her involvement in school system operation.

One interesting question involved substitute teachers.  The Board recently changed the rules to require at least a 2-year college degree for substitute teachers.  That resulted in a shortage of subs when they’re needed.  Candidates were asked how they would solve that problem.

Chapman opined that we should simply raise the pay we offer substitutes.  Brilliant.  Let’s throw money at the problem.

Read failed to address the question and instead spent her time explaining the original decision, as if she felt it needed to be justified.

Farrow rambled for a while.  So did Frye.  Neither had a definite answer, although both echoed previous answers.

Dukes suggested allowing people to work as substitute teachers while in the course of pursuing a two-year degree.  That idea made sense to me.  At least it was a fresh approach.

Strozier had the best idea of all, though.  He suggested implementing a competency test for substitute teachers, so that a definite benchmark (rather than an education requirement) would determine qualification for the position.  Nobody else thought of anything quite so sensible.

The evening was marred somewhat by a group of ladies who sat directly behind me, in the third row.  I’m not sure where they thought they were, but they seemed to feel that they were exempt from the rules of order as well as from common politeness.  They insisted on talking throughout the program.  They were so loud that at times, I found it difficult to lock in on some of the softer-spoken candidates.  As PTA members, perhaps they felt privileged.

(UPDATE 7/10: Who was the loudest of the ladies, who actually heckled one of David Farrow’s answers? I’m told it was none other than Janet Read’s campaign manager.)

In short, the statements, questions, and answers last night also served only to further reinforce the opinions I’d already formed.  The field consists of two arrogant, condescending incumbents (Mike Chapman, Janet Read), two unelectable hopefuls (Wes Frye and David Farrow) and three candidates who need to win their respective seats (Danny Dukes, Kim Cochran, Robert Strozier).

More as it happens.

Disclosure: This article was edited the day after I posted it.  I found my own writing to be somewhat substandard and took the liberty of fixing it.