Incumbent Ray in a 4-way race for new Sumter School District Board of Trustees District 8 seat

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the eighth in a series on the nine Sumter school board district seats that are up for election in November. Each week leading up to Election Day, The Sumter Item will analyze a district (alternatively called area) race and interview candidates on the ballot. All candidates will be contacted. Online, this series, like other election information, will be free to read as a public service. Candidate Q&As in their own words were included in our Vote 2022 Guide that was published in the Oct. 1-3 Weekend edition.

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THE DISTRICT 8 RACE

After recent weeks covering races in county areas, we go back into the City of Sumter this week to look at the new District 8 race. The new District 8, also referred to as Area 8, includes the western and northern portions of the City of Sumter. Major roadways include Wilson Hall Road, Loring Mill Road, Patriot Parkway, Carter Road and Deschamps Road. Alice Drive serves as an eastern boundary line for District 8, and North St. Pauls Church Road is a western boundary line.

Four candidates filed and remain in the race: incumbent Sherril Ray, Phil Leventis, Paul Robbins and Jeff Zell. If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the vote, it will force a runoff two weeks later.

SHERRIL RAY

A Sumter native, Ray is one of six current or career educators serving on the school board. Her career in public education spanned 40 years, starting as a classroom teacher and then an assistant principal and principal. Her principal posts were at Furman Middle School and Lakewood High School, primarily serving under fellow current trustee Frank Baker.

She closed her career as a discipline/expulsion hearing officer at the district office in the consolidated Sumter district from 2013-17.

Ray said she thinks the school board does need a mix of professionals from different backgrounds to serve, but being an educator does help.

"I think it gives you an advantage if you have been a teacher or administrator and know how schools work," she said. "It helps to know the day-to-day operations and the difficulties that all these staff members are facing each day."

In November 2018, she ran for the board and was part of the five-member changeover at the time that voted to reopen Mayewood Middle School in 2019 less than one year after it was closed by the previous board. After the vote, state Superintendent Molly Spearman placed the district on a fiscal emergency declaration. Then, essentially the same board members voted to appeal Spearman's declaration to the state Board of Education, accumulating $26,000 in attorney fees alone in the process. In the spring of 2019, the state board voted unanimously in support of Spearman.

Ray said she still stands behind that decision, noting the costs to modify R.E. Davis College Preparatory Academy, which is where the students were moved. That school is 1.3 miles away from the former Mayewood Middle.

She added she thinks the board should keep open schools in rural communities, noting the extra bus transportation time required for students, and gave the example of Rafting Creek Elementary School in Rembert.

A graduate of Sumter High School, Ray did vote in the spring against implementing district realignment/rezoning next school year, preferring for the new superintendent to have some input and for changes to be phased in over time. It passed, however, with a 5-4 split vote. She added there was much public input then to slow down changing attendance lines.

As far as public involvement with the board, Ray noted community members are still on committees as subcommittee members through a Citizens Advisory Committee system.

District challenges include student discipline as the biggest one, the teacher shortage and low achievement levels.

With COVID-19, the district switched for a relatively long time to virtual learning, and that explains in part why students are behind. Also, persistently high poverty levels in Sumter County impact achievement locally, she said.

Ray is excited for the future, though, with new Superintendent William Wright Jr. and said he is the "right leader" to move the district forward.

She added she does not think the district is in a hopeless situation as some might say because oftentimes in education, the trends do move up and down.

"I really feel proud of our teachers and support staff who are working hard to do the best for our students and get them to where they need to be," Ray said.

Ray's husband is a physical education teacher and softball coach at Sumter High.

PHIL LEVENTIS

A former state senator representing Sumter for 32 years in the General Assembly, Leventis is stepping back into the political arena by running for the school board seat.

He said he is running because schools are so vital to a community's progress, and his wife told him in the spring that she was all for him going for a board seat.

"She got so excited with the idea," Leventis said. "She has never been so intense about my effort, and our effort really, to help and work with the schools. I understand that I have an incredible amount to learn to be an effective board member, but I look forward to that because it is the key to Sumter's future."

Originally from Columbia, Leventis graduated from A.C. Flora High School in the 1960s and went to the University of Virginia. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1969 and moved to Sumter in 1974 to help operate a family business, which he did through 2008.

He also began in 1974 in the South Carolina Air National Guard at McEntire Joint National Guard Base in Eastover. He retired from McEntire in 1999.

Leventis and his wife have four children who all graduated from Sumter High during the 1990s and they are all successful today, he added.

Regarding the school board, Leventis said he has "the time and intensity to want to do it," and he thinks that he has the public policy experience necessary for the position.

He said he thinks the district needs to right-size itself regarding school facilities.

As far as the district's challenges, Leventis noted student discipline, decorum and respect. He said he thinks that has contributed to the district's teacher shortage and a better learning environment must be instilled.

He added board members think too much in terms of city schools versus county schools in Sumter and instead should focus on the district's teachers and students.

A Democrat in the Statehouse, Leventis said partisanship should have no place as a school board member. The school board races are nonpartisan seats, and it should fundamentally stay that way, he maintains.

"If a partisan person gets in based on partisan support," Leventis said, "then they will feel some obligation to introduce partisan rhetoric into the board. And that is just not the way it should be. I have been to the board meetings on numerous occasions, and I have never heard any such rhetoric. But if you look around the country, you sure will."

PAUL ROBBINS

Originally from the Midwest, Robbins moved to Sumter in 2012 and is the area market executive/vice president of The Citizens Bank branch in town. He has worked in the banking and financial sector for 30 years after completing his Bachelor's Degree in Accounting.

Robbins is involved in community service at numerous levels and has held officer/director positions with Rotary Club of Sumter Palmetto, Sumter Habitat for Humanity, the Greater Sumter Chamber of Commerce and the University of South Carolina Sumter Partnership Board, among others.

This is his first venture into politics, and he said he is running because he is a parent of a recent Sumter High School graduate and a "concerned citizen," wanting to help the school board and contribute to change.

The district's challenges include accountability at all levels and discipline, but he recognizes that is "a two-way street" and includes parents ensuring their children are accountable for their actions and prepared for school.

Budgeting and finances are another challenge and responsibility, and Robbins said he thinks the district can be more efficient with some of its spending and strengthen itself in the process.

Preparing students to be the future workforce is always a challenge as well, Robbins added.

Change and improvements can only happen incrementally, he said.

"You cannot do everything at once," Robbins said. "The board and the superintendent need to work together and say, 'What two, three or four things can we look at to begin with that can be worked on immediately that may have success to help build transparency and trust in the school board and the schools?'"

As far as success to build on, the district has a new superintendent, and with all nine board seats up for election, new leadership is a possibility.

"The community needs to get out and vote and make a change," Robbins said. "It's in their hands at this point in time."

JEFF ZELL

An Ohio native, Zell said he felt compelled to join the military after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. and joined the U.S. Air Force in 2002.

He moved to Sumter and Shaw Air Force Base in 2017 and will officially retire with his 20 years of active-duty service next week as a senior non-commissioned officer.

For Zell, running for the school board is his first venture in politics, and he said it is a way to continue to serve his community. He added he plans to potentially start his own small, service-based business within about six months.

As far as the district's challenges, Zell noted enforcing discipline is a top priority based on his talks with teachers, parents and students.

Organizational "accountability" is another major issue with the local district having about an 80% on-time graduation rate but significantly lower college and/or career readiness rates for its students.

"We are producing children who just aren't ready for the real world," Zell said.

That often contributes to a vicious cycle of crime and lower quality of life, according to all the major statistics, he added.

Zell said through effective instruction and proper student behavior intervention, he thinks the district could see correction and improvement relatively quickly.

He considers that a school board member might be the most important job in the nation because what is at stake is our children's future, Zell added.

Zell has a young daughter who started in the local public schools, but when the district did not offer an in-person instruction option in fall 2020 after the initial months of the pandemic, he and his wife could not stay at home with her and were forced to enroll her in a local private Christian school. The district only offered virtual, home-based learning for students for an extended period of time.

He said he knows he made the right choice now, and if an in-person option had been available they would have "absolutely" kept her in the district.

The scenario was unfortunate because he realizes a lot of families could not afford to do what his family did.

Zell added he does not want to pull her out of that private school now because that could disrupt her progress, but the particular school does end at the elementary grade level.

At that time, they will make a decision about whether to put her back into the public school system, he said.

Zell said if voters want to see a candidate who is a clear alternative to the status quo, then he is the choice.

"I am not a status-quo guy," he said. "I refuse to accept status-quo results. Not one person can make the change because it's a legislative body, but one person can absolutely make a difference and change the dynamics. I have done it throughout my entire adult life, and I am going to continue to do it on this board."

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HOW DID WE GET HERE?

All nine seats on Sumter School District's Board of Trustees are on the ballot in the November midterm election.

After the district's financial crisis became apparent in December 2016, the Sumter County Legislative Delegation added two seats to the seven-member school board in spring 2017. The delegation's purpose then in creating the new "at-large" county seats on the board was to bring additional focus and expertise to remedy the district's challenge.

Without an election that year, the delegation appointed the two trustees to the board, expanding it to nine members. In November 2018, these new at-large seats went up for the public's vote for the first time. Being at-large seats, every voter in Sumter County saw the race on the ballot, and the top two vote-getters won the seats.

Frank Baker and Shawn Ragin won those two seats and have served four years.

The delegation specified in the original legislation that after the 2020 U.S. Census' redistricting to account for population shifts, the school board would switch to nine single-member districts for the 2022 election and moving forward. This spring, the delegation had General Assembly staff members who handled state redistricting also reconfigure Sumter County's seven districts into nine. Law requires electoral districts to encompass equal populations in each.

That means while you may not have moved since the last election, you may vote in a different district than previously. Voters can research sample ballots online at scvotes.org or learn more in The Sumter Item's Vote 2022 special guide that published Oct. 1. All Sumter County voters are also receiving a new voter registration card detailing their districts.

The financial challenges of 2016-17 are resolved now largely because of the work of district staff and administration as well as attrition.

Meanwhile, the board that took over in late 2018 -- which includes Baker who was the superintendent in 2016 before retiring in 2017 -- has been often controversial because of its own actions and internal divisions.

Those started with voting to reopen a closed school and subsequently the state Superintendent of Education declaring a "fiscal emergency" in the district in spring 2019. More recently, the board voted 5-4 to remove the last district superintendent after unanimously naming her to the post three years earlier. The vote appeared to violate Penelope Martin-Knox's contract that required her termination to be approved by a supermajority, which would have been six votes. A judge also found the vote was illegal because the surprise motion was not on the agenda, meaning it violated the Freedom of Information Act.

Special interests have tended to dominate the board's activity and conversations over policy and student and staff achievement and wellness, even while public education faces increased competition in recent years with growing educational options available to parents and families. Add onto that a nationwide teacher shortage.

All those factors set the stage for the upcoming election.