Bibb school board District 2 seat should remain with Dillard

The contest between Thelma Dillard, who has held the District 2 seat on the Bibb County Board of Education for the past four years, and Tina Dennard, who has run the Adopt-A-Role Model program for the past 25 years, has gotten a little nasty. Dillard says the Adopt-A-Role Model program doesn’t exist. However, pictures of activities of proteges in the program are worth thousands of words.

Nastiness aside, Dillard does bring a lot of educational firepower to the table. She’s been an instructor at the high school, technical college and college level and earned her master’s degree, specialist degree and her terminal Ph.D., in educational leadership. District 2 has the widest range of educational choices in Bibb County — from Alexander II Magnet and Vineville Academy to Brookdale, Bruce, Ingram-Pye and Williams elementary schools, to Miller Middle Magnet, Central High School, Elam Alexander Academy at Burke, to Northwoods Academy.

Dillard understand there are only three things a board member should help do:

1. Hire a superintendent

2. Balance the budget

3. Carry out policy

There is no doubt both candidates have a heart for children. Dennard has been working in the trenches creating opportunities for primarily children of single-parent, public housing households that they would have never seen but for the program. She touts a 98 percent graduation rate for the students who come through her program. However, the school board is not a hands-on place. In fact, it is a mandated hands-off place, where the superintendent runs the show and the board is there to help implement policy, set goals and hold he or she accountable for results. That’s a hard pill to swallow for anyone who has been so hands-on.

Both candidates are products of public schools in Macon. Both see the challenges of poverty and the one guaranteed ladder out of it. At this time, the Editorial Board feels the best candidate to sit in the District 2 seat is Thelma Dillard.

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Bibb school board District 2 seat should remain with Dillard."