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  • J. Robbie Moore, Brenda Sandlin and Jackie Rogers are sworn in as members of the Murray County Board of Education at Murray County Probate Court on Dec. 29. (Contributed photo)

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January 10, 2011

New Murray school board members ready to serve

Rachel Brown rachelbrown@daltoncitizen.com

Bullying and school funding are foremost on the minds of the three newest members of the Murray County Board of Education as the board meets this month for its first regular meeting of the year.

J. Robbie Moore, a biblical and theological studies major at Regent University online, takes former board member Elizabeth Gould’s seat; Jackie Rogers, an accountant, replaces Josh Young; and Brenda Sandlin, a tea party activist and accountant, fills Tim Dover’s former seat. The new members represent a turnover of nearly half of the seven-member board, and all are new to elected office of any kind.

“I’m still so surprised that I won,” said Moore, who thinks his emphasis on addressing bullying got voters’ attention. “I definitely can’t step out of my bounds as far as what my job is in the school system, but what I want to do is start setting up some times to meet with guidance counselors or principals and administrators and kind of find out where they are in the school. I have a passion about kids not being afraid to go to school. I just think that is so horrible if a child is forced to go to school, and they’re afraid to be there.”

Moore said he knows eliminating bullying entirely is impossible, but he hopes to “find a way to reduce those incidents and head those off when we see them coming.” He emphasized he wasn’t criticizing school employees.

Bullying is an especially sensitive issue for Murray County Schools since two families filed lawsuits against the system alleging officials and personnel didn’t do enough to stop other students from harassing their children. The school system is fighting both those suits.

Sandlin said she doesn’t know the details of those lawsuits or all that the school system is doing to address bullying, but she wants to find out.

“That will be something I’ll be very interested in,” she said.

Rogers said the school system is looking at bullying “as strongly as they can.”

“I promise you, I have not talked to an administrator, I have not talked to anyone yet who was not stressing working hard towards that issue,” he said.



Funding woes, again

“Doing more with less” is an often repeated phrase in education circles these days as the state Legislature continues to reduce funding for public education due to Georgia’s decreasing tax revenues.

More cuts are expected this year, though no one knows how deep they’ll be nor how individual school systems will address them. Moore said while he’ll work hard to save teachers’ jobs, he plans to focus first on serving the students in considering any cuts.

“I know there’s a lot of teachers looking for jobs right now, and it seems like there’s not any available,” he said. “I can’t create jobs for them, but the students have to go to school and their success is my main priority.”

Rogers said “making the best decision we possibly can with the funds available” will be among his biggest challenges as a board member. Last year, board members made the controversial decision to cut the JROTC program in Murray County High School and eliminate 19 jobs in the school system as two parts of a larger effort to trim $4 million for a roughly $54 million budget.

Sandlin said she too wants to work “to affect the students as little as possible” with any budget cuts.



Other changes

Officials anticipate moving the Board of Education meeting place from the central office building on Green Road to the Rock Building across from MCHS sometime this spring. Sandlin said she’s especially excited about moving into the historic structure, which is being renovated with insurance money after all but the walls burned down when lightning struck it in 2009.





 

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