Tough Races for DeKalb School Board Incumbents

August 2nd, 2012

DeKalb County voters cast ballots for four school board seats Tuesday. The results seemed to send a message to incumbents: shape up or we’ll vote you out. Recent financial problems and a lack of cohesion on the school board seemed to affect the way some DeKalb residents, like Giles Stephens and Charles Ponder, voted.

“[I voted] anti-incumbent,” Stephens said, “I just figured, ‘They’re not doing a good job, so vote them out.’”

“I voted for all the new people coming in and [to] throw the incumbents out because I think they’re doing a horrible job,” Ponder said.

They were just two of the DeKalb voters who seemed to share that sentiment. In District 2, incumbent Don McChesney was defeated by Marshall Orson. Orson says his first priority will be developing strong ties with other board members.

“I said throughout my campaign that the first thing I think any board member needed to do is to try to establish personal relationships with their colleagues on the board,” Orson says, “And so that’s the direction and the approach I’m going to take.”

Orson was endorsed by EduKalb, the educational arm of the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce. Leo McClarty, the secretary of EduKalb’s board, says the endorsement was partly due to Orson’s business acumen. But, he says, there’s also another reason.

“The fact that he has children in the system currently I also think helps because truly he has to live with the decisions that he makes,” McClarty explains.

In District 4, incumbent Paul Womack was pushed into a runoff with James McMahon. No incumbent ran in District 6. There will still be a runoff between two candidates. And in District 8, Pamela Speaks held her seat by a slim margin. She was also endorsed by EduKalb, in part because of her experience as a teacher and administrator. But McClarty says the close vote sends a clear message.

“Hey, there really is something that I may need to take a look at and perhaps do differently, or at least I have to do more from an outreach standpoint so that people understand why I make the decisions that I make,” he says.

The runoff elections will be held in August. Other DeKalb school board candidates did not return calls by deadline.