MCSD board vice chairman Mark Cantrell decides whether to seek re-election

Mark Cantrell, the District 6 representative and vice chairman on the Muscogee County School Board, will seek a third four-year term.

“I think I’ve done a good job the last seven years on the school board,” Cantrell, CEO of Action Buildings, told the Ledger-Enquirer in a phone interview Thursday. “I try to vote the way people feel like I should. I try to do the right thing.”

Qualifying for the 2018 local nonpartisan races runs from 9 a.m. March 5 until noon March 9. The deadline to register to vote in those elections is April 23. Advance in-person voting will be April 30 through May 18 in the City Services Center, 3111 Citizens Way. May 22 will be Election Day for those races.

In a joint announcement Jan. 23 at the All On Georgia website, District 2 representative John Thomas wrote that he was speaking for Frank Myers of District 8 when he said they won’t run for a second four-year term. Myers, a self-employed lawyer, and Thomas, an IRS agent, have been the nine-member board’s most outspoken critics of the Muscogee County School District administration.

The other seats on the nine-member board up for election this year are the at-large seat (incumbent Kia Chambers, a former teacher and now the qualifying broker for Prestige Property Brokers) and District 4 (incumbent Naomi Buckner, a special-education teacher in Chattahoochee County). The Ledger-Enquirer reported Monday that Chambers will seek re-election. Buckner hasn’t replied to the Ledger-Enquirer’s query.

The other announced candidates for the school board this year are:

▪ James “Bart” Steed in District 2. He owns Kar-Tunes Car Stereo, and Thomas defeated him in the four-way District 2 race during the 2014 election.

▪ Robert Mathias Roth in District 6. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel and now works from his home as director of government business development for Vertex Solutions, a learning development and services company based out of Urbana, Ill.

▪ Philip Schley in District 8. He is a retired urologist and served on the board for 21 years (1972-81 and 1998-2010), including as chairman for nine years.

▪ David Merlin Wright in District 8. He retired from the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office as a captain and is a former Stowers Elementary School substitute teacher and aide.

In the 2010 election, Cantrell unseated board veteran Brenda Storey, now a retired SunTrust vice president. He ran unopposed in 2014.

Cantrell is considered a swing vote on controversial proposals the administration asks the board approve.

This story was originally published February 1, 2018 at 2:48 PM with the headline "MCSD board vice chairman Mark Cantrell decides whether to seek re-election."