Sumter school board candidate races to lead headlines until Election Day

15 CANDIDATES IN 5 BOARD RACES; ITEM HAS DETAILED COVERAGE

Election season has begun, and for the always high-stakes Sumter school board races, there are opportunities to get to know more on the candidates for the open nonpartisan seats on the nine-member board.

In addition to the Vote Guide with candidate questionnaires that was published in the Sept. 26 Weekend edition, The Item has already started to interview the incumbents and challengers and is publishing race stories weekly for in-depth coverage on the key issues for all five areas with open seats.

Online this series, like other election information, will be free to read as a public service. With five open races, there will be five stories.

The five areas - or districts as they are sometimes referred to - up for the public's vote in this election are Areas 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, and there are a total of 15 candidates.

The newspaper did a similar series in fall 2022 leading up to that election when all nine board seats were up for election because the board then moved to nine single-member districts from seven districts with two at-large seats.

In part because of that detailed coverage, The Item won first place in the category of Community Service journalism in the 2022 South Carolina Press Association Awards Contest for all newspapers.

These five elections will be critical for the overall community's future and also specifically the K-12 education landscape.

TRUSTEES VOTE 4-3 TO REMOVE REZONING DISCUSSION, VOTE

With the stance the school district needs a comprehensive facilities study to be completed before any discussion on realignment or a master plan, a school board majority voted down such a discussion on Sept. 14.

Trustee the Rev. Ralph Canty introduced a motion that passed in a 4-3 vote at the start of Sumter School District's Board of Trustees' meeting that night to delete the realignment and master plan discussion, and he later discussed his perspective on striking the agenda item.

With just two board meetings remaining because he is not seeking reelection, board Chairman Shawn Ragin added the controversial topic of rezoning attendance lines (or realignment) after the original agenda was posted on Sept. 11.

Canty and another trustee, both seeking reelection this year, told The Sumter Item after the agenda addition that they questioned his motives on adding the measure, and a third board member also said Ragin's move "could be being used as an election tactic" for November.

Based on discussions at community meetings in early September, the tactic would be to see which incumbents were for a major rezoning plan immediately to save "all rural schools" as opposed to who was for realignment with some stipulations.

The chairman ignored The Item immediately after a community meeting near Mayesville on Sept. 10, when he initially said the board would be bringing rezoning back to the floor, and did not return the newspaper's phone calls and text messages in the ensuing days.

At the start of the Sept. 14 board meeting, Canty objected to the agenda, and his motion called for removing the realignment and master plan board discussion and a vote later in the meeting "until such time as a facilities study is completed and we have recommendations from the superintendent."

Trustee Bonnie Disney seconded his motion, and Matthew "Mac" McLeod and Phil Leventis also supported it. Those board members against the motion included Ragin, Vice Chairman Brian Alston and Clerk Gloria Lee.

Fellow trustees Tarah Johnson and Brittany English were absent at the start of the meeting for the vote but arrived later.

The district's facilities study - which the board approved later in the meeting for an independent consultant to complete - will take a comprehensive look at all schools to include the age of facilities and whether they could take on more students and capacity issues with updated data. A long-term plan may also be included by the consultant on potential needs to construct new schools.