Incumbents keep seats on Atlanta school board,

A majority of the current Atlanta Board of Education will return after voters re-elected five incumbents to the nine-member board.

Incumbents Leslie Grant, who represents southeast Atlanta District 1; Eshé Collins, who represents south Atlanta District 6; and at-large seat 8 representative Cynthia Briscoe Brown won their contested races Tuesday.

“I do think that the results overall were a vote of confidence in what we’ve done and the progress we’ve made for the past four years and an affirmation of our plans to continue making things better for kids in the next four years,” Briscoe Brown said.

Two incumbents were unopposed in their re-election bids: at-large seat 9 board member Jason Esteves and Nancy Meister, who represents north Atlanta District 4.

Those wins guarantee some measure of board continuity.

In the wake of a major teacher cheating scandal, current board members hired Superintendent Meria Carstarphen in 2014 and supported a charter-system model as a way to improve struggling schools.

Their decisions reconfigured, merged, and closed schools — actions that angered some parents and led to staffing changes. Several schools are now run by nonprofit organizations.

Briscoe Brown is encouraged by early results.

“We’ve seen just incredible success with much of what we’ve already put in place with our most challenging schools,” she said.

A sixth incumbent, Byron Amos, finished first in his three-way race but fell just shy of topping 50 percent of the vote. He will move on to a runoff election against Kei- sha Carey, who works in a corporate position for Sprint, to represent central Atlanta District 2.

Voters will decide that and other runoff races Dec. 5.

In the at-large race for the District 7 post, attorney Kandis Wood Jackson finished first and will face John Wright in the runoff election.

That at-large seat is held by board chairman Courtney English, who narrowly lost election to Atlanta City Council but could seek a recount.

Wright, a program manager for the architectural engineering firm AECOM, manages school construction projects for DeKalb County School District.

“One of the things that I want to ensure is that our public school system stays public-leaning as opposed to private,” he said.

Wood Jackson touts her previous Atlanta teaching experience, which was through the Teach For America program, as a valuable perspective.

While she said she’s not one to wield a rubber stamp, Wood Jackson thinks the current board is on the right track. She pointed out it has only been a few years since the district was mired in a cheating scandal.

Erika Mitchell and Raynard Johnson are the top two finishers for the west Atlanta District 5 seat, held by Steven Lee, who ran unsuccessfully for a Fulton County commissioner post.

The east Atlanta District 3 runoff will feature top vote-getter Michelle Olympiadis-Constan-tinides, a real-estate manager and afternoon Greek school coordinator, and Adzua Agyapon, an educator at the public charter school KIPP STRIVE Primary.

The District 3 seat is currently held by Matt Westmoreland, who on Tuesday won an Atlanta City Council spot.