Getting to know Richard L. Woods, Republican candidate for Georgia school superintendent, means coming here, to a 47-acre tract off Murray Avenue that was once covered with cotton fields and pecan trees.
Cotton, white puffs of snow on rusty stalks, still tops fields nearby, but those fields along Murray were cleared seven years ago to build what is now Northside Baptist Church, a large, ultra-modern church with a 1,000-seat sanctuary.
While Northside Baptist is uber-modern, its mission is Old Testament old: go out, do, help. And for nearly 20 years, Woods, a former teacher and administrator in nearby Irwin County, has enthusiastically fulfilled that mission.
Woods’ policy positions have their root in what he has experienced in Irwin and Tift counties, friends and former colleagues say.
He believes there is too much standardized testing because that was his experience as a teacher and as an administrator. An over-emphasis on testing, he has often said on the campaign trail, leads teachers to “teach to the test and not to the child.”
He is wary of massive federal education initiatives like the Race to the Top grant program because, like many others in rural Georgia, he is wary of policy prescriptions that come from Washington, D.C.
Recently, during a debate with his Democratic opponent, Valarie Wilson, Woods batted back the idea that more money for schools will automatically spark improvements.
“You can throw good money after bad,” he said. “Sometimes, government has done that.”
It was a line sure to resonate in South Georgia, as was his stated opposition to the national set of academic standards known as Common Core.
“I do not want a common education system,” he said. “The only thing I want common is common sense.”
Friends and former colleagues say Woods is uncommonly compassionate and creative.
His work for Northside has taken him all the way to Kenya as well as to various U.S. states: South Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota and Nevada. ‘Taken him’ is probably the wrong description: He drove the church bus himself.
Once there, he’d help with community projects and encourage attendance at the local church.
At Northside, it is often Woods who greets children on Sunday mornings. If there was a church play, he could be counted on to play a character. All in the name of spurring involvement and engagement.
Friends, former students and colleagues say they expect the same character, creativity and energy Woods demonstrates with his church work to come through if he is elected superintendent on Nov. 4.
They say he won’t get to Atlanta and forget the concerns of South Georgia. He’ll be collaborative, they say. He will be unconventional, and, if he’s faced with a policy choice between popular and expedient and difficult but right, his religious faith will guide him.
“I believe Richard will do what God leads him to do,” said Jan Moore, a secretary at Northside Baptist and a friend of Woods for 17 years. “He is compassionate. He knows exactly what it takes.”
Woods found that, sometimes, getting the job done meant wearing a dress.
Sharon Pettis, who worked with Woods during her career as secretary at Irwin County Elementary School, remembered a prank colleagues — she still won’t name names — pulled on Woods one day when he came to school dressed as a woman as part of dress-up day at the school.
Pettis said colleagues told Woods he was needed at the district office. And then they called a local sheriff’s deputy to have Woods pulled over on the way.
When Woods returned to the office, he — and nearly everyone else there — was laughing.
“He said, ‘I know one of you did this. I’ll find out,’ ” Pettis said, laughing at the memory.
The last time Pettis saw Woods, he wasn’t back-slapping or speechifying. She recently made an unplanned stop at their old school and ran into Woods in a hallway.
“I said, ‘Richard, where have you been?’ ” Pettis said. “He said, ‘Reading.’ He was reading Dr. Seuss to an elementary school class.”
One of Woods’ former students, Roxie Seale, remembered that Woods used arts and crafts to get and keep the attention of his high school history class.
“It was fun and creative,” said Seale, now the owner of a clothing, food and crafts store in Irwin County. “It wasn’t boring.”
Just as Woods kept his students engaged, supporters say he’d connect with parents, teachers and legislators to move education forward.
“You can always count on Richard,” Moore said. “Not just to drive the bus. He goes above and beyond in anything that he’ll do. He is a man with integrity, which you don’t always find in politics.”
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