Voters to decide direction of the school board on Tuesday

Frank Myers started a movement two years ago to oust the Muscogee County School Board’s establishment. Whether it continues will be determined Tuesday.

Myers, a self-employed lawyer and political consultant, transformed from the adviser who helped the board pass a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax in 2009 to the board’s most vocal external critic and then to its most vocal internal opposition, voting against the 2015 SPLOST, which also passed.

Myers overwhelmed one-term District 8 representative Beth Harris, a retired educator, 64-36 percent during the 2014 nonpartisan elections. He also helped political newcomer John Thomas, an IRS agent, eject the board’s 28-year stalwart, businessman and property owner John Wells, from the District 2 seat with a runoff rout of 80-20 percent.

Then in this May’s nonpartisan elections, Myers helped another political newcomer, Vanessa Jackson, director of the Childcare Network branch on Hamilton Road, defeat one-term District 3 representative Athavia “A.J.” Senior, retired manager of the Box Springs post office, 57-43 percent.

That gives the Myers camp three dependable votes on the nine-member school board.

All of which brings us to Tuesday, the election day for two more runoffs featuring Myers-backed political newcomers who could tip the board’s balance of power when the newly elected representatives begin their four-year terms in January.

In the District 1 race, three-term incumbent Pat Hugley Green faces retired educator JoAnn Thomas-Brown.

Green, an insurance agent and chief administrator for Hugley’s Facility Management and Janitorial Service, is the board’s vice chairwoman and chairs the finance committee. She is the sister of Columbus City Manager Isaiah Hugley and the sister-in-law of state Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus. Green received 46.62 percent of the district’s 2,651 votes in the May 24 election.

Thomas-Brown is owner and chief executive officer of B&O services, which provides support and a group home for the intellectually disabled. She worked 36 years in the Muscogee County School District, including as principal of Baker Middle School, and earned a place in the runoff by finishing second in the three-way race with 29.95 percent. Al Stewart, another retired educator, came in third with 23.35 percent. There were two write-in votes.

District 7 representative Shannon Smallman, a real estate broker, didn’t seek re-election to a second term. She instead is campaign manager for Cathy Williams, president and chief executive officer of NeighborWorks Columbus, which promotes and provides access to fit and affordable housing.

After serving on the board for eight years, including two as chairwoman, Cathy Williams didn’t seek re-election to the board’s lone countywide seat in 2014. Two years later, she said she wasn’t satisfied with the choices in District 7 so she qualified as a candidate.

Cathy Williams, the wife of Ledger-Enquirer senior reporter Chuck Williams, received 46.04 percent of the district’s 1,173 votes in the May 24 election. Her runoff opponent is Shelia Williams, who works with Thomas-Brown as executive director of B&O Services.

Shelia Williams also has been a team leader and support coordinator for Columbus Community Services, an online adjunct criminal justice instructor for Troy University at Fort Benning and a lead teacher for Easter Seals of West Georgia. Shelia Williams received 32.91 percent of the District 7 vote May 24 to qualify for the runoff. Former board member Norene Marvets, co-owner of John Paul’s Jewelers, received 21.06 percent.

In the two months since, the runoff campaigns have heated up along with the temperature. Controversy has spread like kudzu, especially in one sizzling week. Here’s a summary:

July 12

During a debate conducted by the Columbus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Shelia Williams alleged Cathy Williams paid for an endorsement and a racial editorial cartoon when her campaign bought an ad in the Courier, a Columbus weekly newspaper. Cathy Williams emphatically denied the accusation. The cartoon depicted Myers, a white man, as a puppet master controlling three black females — Shelia Williams, Thomas-Brown and Jackson — saying “Yessa Massa.”

July 14

Myers alleged Columbus City Manager Isaiah Hugley threatened the job of a Kinetic Credit Union employee, Nathan Smith, for campaigning against Hugley’s sister, Green. Myers also alleged Hugley called Smith a “motherf-----” during a confrontation at the debate two days earlier. Hugley emphatically denied the allegations and accused Myers of threatening and bullying him, school board members and Superintendent David Lewis.

Mark Cantrell, the board’s District 6 representative, forwarded to the Ledger-Enquirer what he says is a text message he received from Myers after he didn’t vote with him against the superintendent’s budget because it includes raises of 2 percent instead of 3 percent for teachers.

The text message says: “I’m truly going to run somebody against you in 2018. You have no backbone whatsoever. No principle. Nothing. Just letting you know. It’s clear that you got on the school board in order to sell more Action Buildings. And that is just pathetic.”

Cantrell, who was elected to the board in November 2010, when he unseated Brenda Storey, said Myers never has helped him campaign.

Myers confirmed the authenticity of the text message in an email Saturday to the Ledger-Enquirer.

“If that is not the exact text I sent to Mark Cantrell recently, it's really, really close,” Myers wrote. “My political problem with Mark is that he says one thing, yet votes in the complete opposite fashion. This has become customary. I feel certain the teachers will remember Mark's vote on the issue of their raises in 2018.

“I followed up with a conversation with Mark last Monday night before the school board meeting. Mark and I agreed to disagree on some issues. We have a mutual understanding that we will both likely have opposition if we run again in 2018, and agreed that none of this is personal and we can treat each other with respect. We shook hands and I left feeling good about the way we left things.”

July 18

After the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, a group of black Columbus clergy, issued a news release alleging Frank Myers is helping these challengers to secure enough votes on the board to “get rid of the superintendent,” approximately 40 IMA members or their supporters attended the board’s monthly meeting, where the Rev. Ralph Huling, the IMA president, accused Myers of micromanaging the administration, trying to “stack the board” and using “mafia-style” tactics to unseat incumbents.

Huling didn’t provide any evidence of his accusations, and Myers didn’t directly deny them.

Asked whether he is trying to get rid of the superintendent, Myers wrote in an email to the Ledger-Enquirer, “So I’m supposed to comment on evidence of which I have not been apprised?

“All I have ever wanted is for David Lewis to take the lead in fixing our broken school system. I’ve repeated that over and over.”

During the July 12 debate, Cathy Williams said, “I want to be the candidate that will support this superintendent and not try to get five votes to fire him,” but she didn’t accuse Myers.

In emails July 18 to the L-E, Thomas-Brown and Shelia Williams explicitly stated that “getting rid of the superintendent” is not part of their desire to serve on the board. They insist the discussion should focus on how the district will improve its failing schools.

“I have no hidden agenda,” Thomas-Brown wrote. “The children and teachers are my priorities.”

“It is so very disheartening that the focus of this race has been placed on Frank Myers and Dr. Lewis,” Shelia Williams wrote. “But, anything to divert the attention of the voters from the real issues.”

Earlier in the day, Nadine Moore, the black leader of the Four Points Parents Association of Columbus, announced in a news conference that the black community in Columbus is divided between “the haves” who support the school board’s establishment and the “have-nots” who should vote for the new candidates.

“If you like what you have, if you like your failing schools, then vote for what you have,” Moore said. “Otherwise, vote for a change.”

Referendum on district’s direction

The runoff elections also can be viewed as a referendum on the school district’s direction since the board hired Lewis in July 2013 from Polk County, Fla., where he was an assistant superintendent. The campaigns interpret the statistics in contrasting ways.

Based on the 2015 results of the state’s standardized tests, called the Georgia Milestones Assessment System, two of the 10 schools out of 53 in the district improved enough to be removed from the failing list and no MCSD schools were added. But three-fourths of MCSD’s schools scored below the state average on the Georgia Milestones.

In the first week of May, the 2015 College and Career Ready Performance Index, which rates schools and districts with one overall number, showed MCSD improved its score to an all-time high in the four-year history of the accountability system. On the 100-point scale, Muscogee improved 0.5 points this past year, from 68.5 in 2014 to 69.0 in 2015. Muscogee County’s scores were 67.2 in 2012 and 66.5 in 2013.

Muscogee, however, still ranks below the state average CCRPI, which improved from 72.0 in 2014 to 75.5 in 2015. The state average was 74.1 in 2012 and 75.8 in 2013.

MCSD also has increased its graduation rate during the past three years by 11.8 percentage points, from 72.8 to 84.6, while the state’s rate has increased by 7.0 points, from 71.8 to 78.8.

This coming week the 2016 Georgia Milestones results are expected to be made available to the public. Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza said the test scores “probably” will be released Tuesday — the same day Columbus voters in District 1 and District 7 will decide the balance of power on the Muscogee County School Board.

This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 9:32 PM with the headline "Voters to decide direction of the school board on Tuesday."