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June 23, 2010

Candidate profile: Dickson touts his legislative experience

Jamie Jones jamiejones@daltoncitizen.com

Tom Dickson jokes that it takes at least two years to find the bathrooms in the Capitol building in Atlanta.

It’s his way of illustrating the importance of experience in the state Legislature, where he has served as the representative from District 6 in the House since 2005. He serves on five committees: appropriations; economic development and tourism; education; human relations and aging (vice chairman); and regulated industries (secretary). Because of the state budget crisis and looming reapportionment, he says his leadership will be vital to the district going forward.

Dickson faces Mike Cowan, a member of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners, in the July 20 Republican primary. The winner will take on Democrat Tommy Patterson, who has no opposition. District 6 includes parts of Catoosa, Murray and Whitfield counties.

“The Legislature is going to be making decisions that are going to affect the area,” Dickson said. “We’re probably going to receive another congressional seat in the state of Georgia. Those of us who have been down there from this area, not just myself, not just Roger (Williams, a representative from Dalton), all of us from this northwest corner of the state are all very interested in trying to make sure that new congressional seat ends up here in northwest Georgia.”

Dickson was born in Pennsylvania and has lived in Whitfield County since 1967. He has a bachelor’s degree from Maryville College, a master’s in education from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an educational specialist degree from the State University of West Georgia. He spent 34 years in education, mostly with Whitfield County Schools.

His expertise is education, he says. After all, he was a teacher, coach, bus driver, summer maintenance worker, middle school assistant principal, elementary school principal, director of technology, transportation and finance, and then was appointed assistant superintendent. He was Whitfield County Schools superintendent from 1998 until his retirement in June 2003.

Given his background, he said he is particularly affected by job cuts in education.

“To sit down there and to have to vote to cut funds, it’s painful,” Dickson said. “Because probably more than most down there, I know what the impact of some of those cuts are going to be.”

He would like to see legislators and school superintendents examine the result of calendar adjustments made by some school systems throughout the state to save money. Murray County Schools has a 160-day school calendar planned for the upcoming school year. Most school systems have 180-day calendars. Dalton Public Schools and Whitfield County Schools have cut back to 175 days.

“It’s one thing to say it saves money for the system, but what’s the impact on student performance, student learning?” Dickson said. “I think we need to be very careful before we go well into this kind of scenario and start making these pretty extensive changes in school calendars. At the same time, we need to be supportive of systems trying to cope with less dollars.”

Dickson said he doesn’t plan on introducing any major legislation if he returns to Atlanta in January.

“I think we sometimes try to pass too many laws,” he said. “So what it will be for me is looking at what we have done and particularly what we did in the last session and say, ‘We passed it, people are having to start dealing with it, do we have to modify it?’”

Dickson is married and has two grown children and three grandchildren.

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