District 1
Carole Boyce (incumbent)
Age: 62
Political party: Republican
Political experience: Member of the Gwinnett County Board of Education since January 2005, currently the vice chairwoman
Education: Bachelor's degree in English and elementary education from Furman University; master's degree in middle grades education from Georgia State University; bachelor's degree in interior design, American College for the Applied Arts
Professional experience: Public relations; taught sixth- and seventh-grade language arts and social studies from 1972 to 1984 in Greenville, S.C., and DeKalb County; had her own design firm
Jennah Es-Sudan
Age: 60
Political party: Democrat
Political experience: First-time candidate
Education: Master's degree in business/accountancy, University of Phoenix
Professional experience: Business owner/tax accountant for 21 years; teacher for state of Georgia for 12 years
District 3
Jen Falk
Age: 51
Political party: Democrat
Political experience: None
Educational: Bachelor's degree in marketing, University of Florida
Professional experience: Special projects director for the statewide nonprofit Parent to Parent of Georgia, which serves families of children and young adults with disabilities; human resources director, Macy's IT corporate division
Mary Kay Murphy (incumbent)
Age: 75
Political party: Republican
Political experience: Member of the Gwinnett County Board of Education since 1997
Education: Doctorate in education administration, Georgia State University; master's in education and research, Emory University; bachelor's in English and philosophy, Loretto Heights College (Denver)
Professional experience: Currently in 10th year as a college administrator at Morehouse School of Medicine; also a college administrator at Oglethorpe University (eight years), University of Georgia (two years) and Georgia Tech (nine years); English teacher in public schools in California and Georgia for seven years
District 5
H.K. Dido
Age: 40
Political party: Republican
Political experience: First-time candidate; president of homeowners' association, Laurel Brooke Association Inc., since 2005
Education: Master's degree in public health from Morehouse School of Medicine; master's degree in international affairs and development, international politics and diplomacy from Clark Atlanta University
Professional experience: Currently administrative fellow, Emory University School of Medicine; assistant principal and teacher for 15 years; member of SACS/CASI committee to accredit private and charter schools in Georgia; on several board of directors, including Oakhurst Medical Centers, Stone Mountain
Louise Radloff (incumbent)
Age: 77
Political party: Democrat
Political experience: Member of the Gwinnett Board of Education since January 1973, its chairwoman and vice chairwoman nine times; chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Board of Health; past president of the Georgia School Boards Association
Education: Lorretto Abby, Canada; Shaw's Business Institute, Canada
Professional background: Currently executive director of a nonprofit, teacher and on-site administrator; New York Telephone Co.; Angus Robertson Ltd., administrative aid
Gwinnett County voters haven’t turned out a sitting school board member in nearly two decades, and they’ve put one into the state record books with nearly 40 years of service.
But that’s not stopping three first-time candidates with big ideas and shoestring budgets from challenging incumbents in November.
They largely say it’s time for new faces and fresh eyes to set policies and scrutinize the $1.7 billion budget of the state’s largest school system. Otherwise, they say, some spending — including $900,000 that went to help the chamber of commerce with economic development and $656,343 for an outside review of the district’s land purchases — would have been challenged, if not rejected.
“The time has come for Gwinnett County [school board members] to be more transparent in their decision-making, to be more accountable on their academic results, both good and bad, and to be responsive to the issues, not only in their own district, but across the county,” said Jen Falk, a longtime education advocate who is challenging 16-year incumbent Mary Kay Murphy in District 3.
The incumbents say the five-member school board puts students first and plays a part in the district’s success. That includes $1 million in student scholarship money it received in 2010 when the Broad Foundation recognized Gwinnett as the nation’s top urban school system.
By focusing on student achievement, board members say they’ve steered clear of the infighting and micromanaging that has put other metro school boards in a negative spotlight.
“So often we’ve seen in neighboring areas where adult issues get in the way of what they’re doing,” said Carole Boyce, a two-term school board member from District 1. “Who are the losers? The students.”
Boyce is being challenged by Jennah Es-Sudan, a tax accountant, mother of two and grandmother of seven.
Es-Sudan says running for the school board seemed a natural next step for her. She’s had a lifelong interest in education that includes 12 years working with special needs children in DeKalb County in the 1970s and 1980s and years of volunteering at her children’s and grandchildren’s schools.
“I’ve just always loved children and public service,” said Es-Sudan, a Democrat. “Therefore, I feel [serving on the school board] would be the perfect opportunity for me to have a close-up view and a hand in determining the great future for our children.”
She said the school board, now all-white, needs to better reflect Gwinnett’s diversity. She also favors term limits for board members.
“There is no way a board member should be on for 40 years,” Es-Sudan said. “That’s just unreasonable.”
Boyce said board members have done well dealing with a multitude of changes, including demographic shifts, the economic downturn and state budget cuts.
Louise Radloff, a member of the school board since 1973 and its current chairwoman, changed parties to run as a Democrat in the newly redrawn and more diverse District 5 in the Norcross area. She’s being challenged by H.K. Dido, a Republican who speaks five languages, taught private school in Atlanta and has three children in private schools.
Radloff, 77, said she’s constantly “looking at the data and opportunities for kids to get scholarships.”
She runs a Saturday program to assist and tutor academically challenged students and a Sunday program for parents who need help with language, technology and citizenship problems.
A school in Gwinnett bears her name, and her many accolades include being named a 2012 National Mother of Achievement. The Georgia School Boards Association ranks her as Georgia’s second-longest-serving school board member.
Radloff said the board faces several challenges, including state budget cuts, a growing level of poverty in the county and the potential for further erosion of pubic school funding in the event an amendment passes in November essentially re-creating a state board to approve charter schools.
Dido said he’s going door to door campaigning in what he knows will be “a tough battle.” He said he has great respect for Radloff and simply believes “it’s time for a change.”
“Forty years is a long time for any politician to be in office,” Dido said.
A resident of Norcross since 1997, Dido said he’s concerned about the school system’s low graduation rate and believes it should place more emphasis on the core subjects of math, science and English language arts.
“How am I going to trust my three little children to a school system that has a $1.7 billion budget and the end result is a 67 percent graduation rate?” he asked. “That’s not acceptable.”
Dido also advocates for development of a system to test students every six weeks to better monitor student achievement throughout the year.
In District 3, Murphy, a Republican, said the Broad Prize meant so much because it recognized the district’s efforts at closing the achievement gap at a time when the district was never larger, never more diverse and its test scores were never higher.
“And we don’t cheat to make it happen,” she said.
Murphy disputes Falk’s claims that board members are too in lockstep and rarely raise questions or have public discussion about the system’s mammoth budget. She said she puts her researcher instincts, honed during work on her doctorate, to work on all issues that come before the board. She said she regularly consults education experts from local universities and research institutes.
“It is more thoughtful than it appears,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t have stayed 16 years if she and the other board members weren’t able to find common ground.
Murphy also defends the decision to hire former U.S. Attorney Joe Whitley to investigate the school system’s land deals after an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We wanted the truth at all costs,” she said, noting that the board could not investigate itself and was ultimately exonerated by Whitley’s investigation.
Falk said the board could have just asked the district attorney to investigate.
She said she believes the school “violated the public trust” in committing nearly $1 million to the chamber’s economic recruitment, an initiative her opponent supports. There’s evidence the money was never discussed in a school board meeting or voted on, Falk said.
One of Falk’s goals is to open up the budget process to encourage more questions about the details and deep discussion about the spending priorities in these difficult budget times. Falk also wants to look at the system’s general administrative expenses, which she believes could be cut by $20 million if brought down to the state average.
She said board members can agree too much. She said she counted 1,000 unanimous votes in the past six years, a figure Murphy disputes.
“I don’t know anybody who agrees that much” Falk said. “ ‘Leave It to Beaver’s’ parents don’t agree that much.”
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