School board hopefuls set to file
4 slots up for vote in county districts
The annual candidate filing period for those seeking election Sept. 19 to seats on school boards begins today and will conclude at noon Tuesday.
To qualify for the ballot, potential candidates must submit to their local county clerks a set of documents that includes petitions signed by 20 registered voters. The petition signers must reside in the school districts or, in some cases, the school board election zones in which the candidates live.
In Pulaski County, the North Little Rock and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts each have two seats up for election.
Neither the Little Rock School District nor the Pulaski County Special School District will hold board elections this year.
In North Little Rock, the Zone 5 seat now held by Scott Teague and the Zone 6 seat held by Sandi Campbell are up for election.
Teague, a 12-year member of the board, said Monday that he will not run for re-election.
“I think it’s probably time to pass the baton and let someone else do it for a while,” said Teague, who is a North Little Rock banker and the father of three, the youngest of whom will be a high school sophomore.
“That plays a little bit into it,” Teague said. “I think I would just like to be a dad and enjoy watching his last three years of school rather than being on the School Board.”
Teague also said the districtwide capital improvement program has been completed and the district has a “good path forward” for offsetting the loss in 2018-19 of $7.6 million a year in state desegregation aid.
“Those were my areas of expertise — finance and construction. That has all kind of wound down,” he said.
Campbell, on the other hand, said Monday that she intends to run for re-election to the North Little Rock position she has held since 2014.
“I just feel like I have not finished what I started. There’s so much we still have to do,” said Campbell, who was employed in the district for 35 years as a registered nurse and nursing supervisor before her retirement.
She is the mother of two adult children.
The North Little Rock School Board terms are for three years and are unpaid.
In the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski School District, Jim Moore, who represents the district’s Zone 3, said Monday he will file paperwork this week to be a candidate for re-election to the seat he has held since the new district’s first School Board was elected in September 2015.
All seven members of the new board were elected at that time. The members then drew for their initial terms of two, three or four years. Moore and Watson drew the two-year terms. All successive terms will be for four years and will be unpaid.
“I think consistency is important on a new school board — especially with the new buildings we are doing,” Moore said, adding that familiarity with the district’s obligations in a federal school desegregation lawsuit is also important.
“I want to make sure that we have a good school district,” Moore said. “I’m excited about running for re-election and remaining on the board.”
Moore, the father of two adult sons, is retired from the U.S. Air Force and Reserve. He is employed as president and chief executive officer of the Stonewall Homeowners Association and is also chairman of the Jacksonville Planning Commission.
The district’s Zone 4 seat —now held by LaConda Watson — is also up for election this year.
Efforts to reach Watson by email and phone regarding her interest in re-election were not successful Monday. Watson is the mother of four and the chief executive officer of the Jacksonville Boys and Girls Club.
Elsewhere in the county, the Little Rock School District is operating under state control and has no locally elected school board and so will not hold a school board election in September.
The Pulaski County Special School District elected a full slate of seven board members just last November after operating without a locally elected school board for five years. The district will not hold a school board election until 2018.