A seat left vacant on the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Board of Trustees will be filled Sept. 19.
The Starkville Board of Aldermen interviewed candidates Sumner Davis, Lisa Long and Debra Prince for the seat Tuesday. The seat has been vacant since late June, when School Board member Anne Stricklin resigned to join her husband, University of Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin in Gainesville, Florida. It is one of three seats appointed by the board, with the remaining two elected by citizens of Oktibbeha County.
The candidates went before the board one-by-one and were interviewed by the body, with questions centering on the district’s budget, their thoughts on what the biggest issue the district is facing currently is and why they were the most qualified for the seat.
Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill also asked the candidates for their views on sharing district facilities with the city, which all three were amicable to.
Davis, who serves as department head and governmental training specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Center for Government and Community Development said he considered his experience working with budgets a potential asset to the school board. Davis has also served two terms on the Board of Aldermen.
“Budgets are always going to be your number-one issue, because that’s going to drive everything else you want to do," Davis said. ”The availability of the funding is going to drive your ability to deliver services. I mean, it’s pretty simple.”
Davis said he hoped to help the district continue on its current trajectory. However, he said the district couldn’t lose focus of current issues while intensely focusing on the Partnership School.
“We cannot lose focus of the longer-term planning horizon.” Davis said. “We cannot sit back and rest on our laurels saying that’s going to be a panacea for all of our building needs.”
Long, a researcher at the MSU Social Science Research Center, said she had worked in education around the world and also cited experience working with large budgets, including a $1 million budget to rehabilitate Albanian schools used as shelters during the Balkan Crisis of the early 1990s.
“It’s obviously a very different budget set, but through that process I learned of course, that money has to be used judiciously and wisely and not wasted,” Long said. “I had to keep a really mindful eye on all the details, all the different budget lines, and ask questions when I had them about where some of the money is going, down to the last penny sometimes how the money was being used.
Long said unique opportunities for learning existed within the diversity of the district.
“Our children have such an opportunity to learn from each other and to learn from children from other parts of the world who are here because perhaps their families work with Mississippi State,” Long said.
Long also spoke to her experiences serving on the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) at various schools in the district.
Prince, a professor in the MSU College of Education, who has sought appointments to the school board twice before, also spoke to her PTO experience, in addition to 11 years spent as a teacher in the district.
“I’ve been the ‘P’ and the ‘T’ of the PTO and PTA for a long time,” Prince said.
Prince also cited experience serving on executive boards for the Boys and Girls Club and NAACP, as well as the MSU Faculty Senate.
Prince said a major part of her decision to enter the running for the seat was an achievement gap in the district.
“We’re not unique in that we’re the only place that has an achievement gap, but I’m talking about two major achievement gaps, one achievement gap is between African-American students and Caucasian students,” Prince said. “Another achievement gap is between economically disadvantaged students and students who are not."
Prince said she thought she had the right skillset to close the achievement gap, helping more students leave the district college or career-ready.
“We can’t place the ownership on our students’ achievement, on the parents, on the teachers, on any one thing,” Prince said. “There’s something that we all could do better.”