Post 1 Candidate For Oconee County School Board Explains Referendum On Ballot That Would Remove Him As Chair

***Ransom Says Chair Should Have Experience***

Michael Ransom, who is seeking to become chair of the Oconee County Board of Education, will be on the ballot in two places when early voting for the Nov. 5 election starts on Tuesday.

First, his name appears as the Republican Party nominee for “County Board of Education Chairman, Post 1,” in the first of the three School Board races near the end of the ballot. He is unopposed.

His name doesn’t appear on the very last item on the ballot, but the Special Election “Reconstitution of Board of Education” would remove Ransom from the Chairman, Post 1 position on the Board if voters select Yes rather than No when they cast their ballots.

That referendum, if approved, would overturn a referendum approved by Oconee County voters in 1964 that created an elected rather than appointed Board of Education for the county with five members and with Post 1 designated as the chair.

If voters approve the referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot, the five members of the Board, rather than the voters, would select the Board chair, beginning on Jan. 1.

Ransom, in a 45-minute long video interview that covered a variety of topics, said he would like voters to approve the referendum because it is a way of guaranteeing that the chair has experience on the Board before being elected to that position.

Ransom said he decided to seek re-election to the Board, albeit not in his current Post 5 position but as chair, in part, because he wants to be involved in discussions about expanding the current high schools or building a third one.

He also said he supports current Board and Oconee County Schools policy of not releasing documents, including those involving the budget, until they are considered final, that he would not have allowed the co-publishers of the local newspaper to speak at the Aug. 12 meeting had he been chair, and that he is in favor of the Board holding Town Hall meetings.

Details Of Referendum

In 1964, Oconee County voters overwhelmingly (84.7 percent) approved a referendum on the ballot that gave them the right to elect a five-member Board to oversee operation of the county’s schools.

Ransom 9/21/2024

Prior to the vote in 1964, members of a county Grand Jury appointed members of the Board of Education.

The 1964 resolution states that “The individual elected to Post Number 1 should be the Chairman of the Board.”

The resolution also states that “Any vacancy occurring in the membership of the Board of Education of Oconee County, for any cause whatsoever, shall be filled by the majority vote of the remaining members of the Board of Education.”

If voters approve the referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot, this procedure would be changed, and the county would follow the procedures for filling vacancies on the Board as stated in the Georgia Constitution.

Vacancies that occur more than 90 days prior to a general election are to be filled by a special election, according to the Constitution.

The resolution on the Nov. 5 ballot actually has two parts, first, changing how the chair is selected, and second, changing how vacancies are filled. Voters will not get to vote on the two separately. A Yes vote will do both things.

History Of Resolution

Ransom, in the interview I conducted with him on Sept. 21 in one of the study rooms at the Oconee County Library in Watkinsville, said the idea for the resolution on the Nov. 5 ballot came from Rep. Marcus Wiedower, who represents six of the eight precincts in Oconee County in the House of Representatives in Atlanta.

Ransom said this proposal from Wiedower followed the outcome of a nonbinding question on the May 2022 Republican Party Primary ballot in which more than nine in 10 of those responding said vacancies on the Board of Education should be filled by a vote of citizens.

The local Republican Party put the item on the ballot after the Board Chair Tom Odom, re-elected as Chair by voters in November of 2020, announced he was stepping down on Aug. 9 of 2021 for health reasons.

On Sept. 2 of 2021, the Board moved then Post 3 Board Member Kim Argo to the position of Board Chair and appointed former Board Member Wayne Bagley to fill Argo’s Post 3 position. All of these Board Members had been elected as Republicans.

“We talked to Representative Wiedower in the past,” Ransom told me, “and he said he felt like that’s what the community wanted (election of replacements) based on the last ballot question, and so he was interested in pursuing that and asked if we wanted to be part of it.”

When Post 4 Board Member Tim Burgess, who is Board liaison with the legislature, agreed to work with Wiedower, “Rep. Wiedower was able to get his legal counsel to write it up,” Ransom said.

Ransom said that Rep. Houston Gaines, who represents the remaining two Oconee County precincts, also “recommended” that the resolution be put before voters based on “the nonbinding question that was on the ballot at the last election.”

(I sent both Wiedower and Gaines this summary of what Ransom had said via email on Oct. 9 and asked for any reactions. Neither has responded.)

Ransom On Benefits Of Referendum

Ransom, in his comments in our Sept. 21 interview, focused entirely on the need for the Board to be able to fill the chair position in the case of a vacancy in asking voters to approve the resolution on the ballot.

Becker And Ransom 9/21/2024

As the case of Odom and Argo illustrated, the Board can control appointment of the Board Chair either if the resolution passes or fails.

Ransom said one justification for the resolution is that “About 80 percent or so of the school systems in the state do that currently.”

Ransom said “We’ve seen it work pretty well for Walton County. We do a lot of training with Walton County when we have to go to continuing ed.”

According to data from the Georgia School Board Association, 82.2 percent of the 180 districts in the state allow the Board to select its own chair.

The neighboring districts of Greene County, Jefferson City Schools, Oglethorpe County, and Social Circle City Schools ask voters to elect the Board Chair.

Ransom said Walton County has had smooth transition when the Board Chair decides to step down, and the Board uses the vice chair position as a way of preparing the person for the chair.

“You get selected as a vice chair,” he said, “then you get selected as chairman, and they rotate through it.”

Decision To Run

Ransom said he was uncertain about running for his second four-year term on the Board because of “the time that's involved with being on the Board” but when Burgess and Argo announced that they were not going to seek re-election, “that really solidified my decision.”

“When Kim and Tim decided not to run,” he said, “I thought well instead of running for my Post 5 maybe run for the chairman position since it is still just one vote but they do have a little bit closer relationship with the superintendent, help set the agenda.”

“A lot of times we rely on Kim to be the voice of the Board,” he said.

Ransom said he got the support of Amy Parrish and Ryan Hammock, who are not up for re-election, before he decided to run for Post 1 Board Chair. Neither opted to challenge him.

Ransom said, however, he has no commitment from the two to support him for Chair if the referendum passes, negating his election by the voters as Board Chair.

Ransom said a desire to stay on the Board until his three daughters finished high school played a role in his decision to run for re-election.

“I don't think we're necessarily going to be building a third high school anytime soon,” he added. “I think we've kind of plateaued on population growth and student growth.”

“But just being here to make that decision,” he said, “whether we're expanding the current high schools or building a third one, I wanted to be part of that.”

Other Questions And Responses

Ransom said back in March that the Board has considered asking Wiedower and Gaines to introduce legislation to increase the salaries of Board Members, who receive only $1,800 per year at present.

Becker And Ransom 9/21/2024

I asked Ransom in the Sept. 21 interview: “Should the salaries of the members of the Board of Education be increased, and, if so, what would you consider to be an appropriate annual salary for Board members?”

“That's a tough question,” he responded. “Just based on the time involvement, I think it probably would be nice to have some, a little bit more, compensation, but I don't think that's why anybody gets onto the Board of Education.”

Ransom defended the decision by Oconee County Schools Open Records Officer Steven Colquitt to refuse to release the criteria used to evaluate Superintendent Jason Branch.

“This is personnel evaluations, which is confidential, he said. “I don't know where that line is between this is not confidential and this is confidential.”

“That would be a question for Steven,” he said.

Ransom said he would not have allowed Michael and Amanda Prochaska, co-publishers of The Oconee Enterprise, to speak at the Aug. 12 Board meeting had he been chair at that time. Argo denied them the opportunity to speak.

“I think they were out of order with the way that they tried to approach it,” he said. “So I was a little disappointed to see that. I really wish that they wouldn't have done that.”

Budget Documents

The Board, both in this year’s budget and in last year’s budget, listed $50,000 as the projected income from investments. Yet last year it received $2.7 million in investment revenue.

Citizens have asked for an explanation of this budgeting, but no one on the Board has responded.

“Any kind investment funds like that are just kind of a generic placeholder,” Ransom said when asked about that in the Sept. 21 interview. The actual figures are inserted “when we finalize the budget at the end of the summertime and in August and send it off to the state.”

Ransom said the Board “probably should put a little more, or better number” in the budget to reflect interest incomes.

Citizens last year and this year asked for a line item budget–before it was approved. None was provided, and I asked Ransom for an explanation.

“So usually I don't think they'll send out anything that's not a formal document or at least finalized to the point of something that we can say, this is kind of what it's going to be like,” Ransom said.

“So if it's just a work in progress or if it's a draft or they're still working on figuring out what's going on, I don't think it is something that's appropriate to share necessarily at that point,” he said.

Third High School Example

“If it's something, you know, the very early stages of whatever's getting worked on, it's probably not helpful anyway” to release the document, Ransom continued. “In fact, it may be less than helpful.”

Ransom 9/21/2024

“You know, one example is everybody assumed we were going to build a third high school. I don't think that's anywhere on the radar,” he said.

“But somewhere along the way somebody said that and that became a hot topic item and everybody's saying, well, show us the documentation that y'all need to have a third high school.”

“There is no documentation,” he said.

“I don't see any issues giving out information as long as it's something that we're fairly certain about,” he said.

“I don't want to give out, like I said, unfinalized information just because sometimes that creates more trouble and more questions than are unnecessary.”

I reminded Ransom that discussion of the possibility of a third high school originated with Superintendent Jason Branch, speaking at a Board retreat held at the Georgia Club outside the county in January of 2023. Branch put forward concrete plans to begin that consideration.

Transparency, Town Hall, Third High School

At the end of the interview, I asked Ransom if he wanted to talk about things I didn’t cover in my questions.

“We get questions about transparency quite a bit, and being available as Board members, and being kind of standoffish,” he said.

Ransom said holding Town Hall style meetings, possibly in collaboration with the Board of Commissioners, would help address that problem.

“So maybe once a quarter (we could hold a meeting) where we can answer questions about a third high school, because you know, we don't talk about that at every meeting,” Ransom said.

Ransom said the Board is “not really” talking about it, but “if we're going in 2030, or 2032 build a third high school, we need to start looking at where to buy land now and start saving money to get to that point.”

“So those kind of big, long 10-year kind of conversations I think would be better answered at something like a Town Hall or just open communications with the BOC.”

“We're going to work really closely with them on trying to find land. How will that affect Sheriff's Department? How will that affect utilities?” he asked.

“And if we build a third high school over here, or if we did expand these, this ones, what's that gonna do? The traffic patterns,” he said.

“If we decide to do expansion or build a third high school,” Ransom said. A Town Hall meeting “would be a good opportunity to say, all right, this is where we are in the process.”

Video

The video below is of the entire interview I conducted with Ransom on Sept. 21.

Ian Taylor joined me for that interview and stood behind me making sure the video and audio were recording correctly and the video stayed focused on Ransom.

The video includes questions not covered in the summary above as well as materials summarized only briefly above.