Marion County School Board appoints local members

Also during the meeting Marion County School Attendance Supervisor Jimmy Vereen was honored with a resolution. Vereen was recently honored as volunteer of the year with he Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Pee Dee.

By: Jennifer Bartell | SCNOW
Published: June 18, 2008

Trustees of the Marion County Board of Education appointed board members to the county's three local school districts during the Tuesday meeting. The seven-member school district boards in Marion County are Marion School District 1, Marion School District 2 and Marion School District 7. Appointments are for two-year terms that frun from July 1 to June 30, 2010. Marion County voters elect county board of education members and those board members interview and appoint the districts' boards.

The board unanimously reappointed all three MSD1 board members, Lillian Wilson, Lynn McElveen and Renee Baxley. Fredric “Ric” Levy interviewed for a board seat, but was not selected.

MSD2 board will get a new board member. Applicants seeking reappointment were John W. Hughes, Elizabeth G. Hammond and Jeffery Neal Fairbanks. The board unanimously appointed Hughes, Hammond and then added Dr. Makram Bishara, a long-time educator from Mullins, to the board. Cynthia Furnace Lawes interviewed for a seat but was not selected.

MSD7 also gained a new board member. Unanimously re-approved as board members were Priscilla Legette and Mickey Boatwright. Shiril W. Graves, who recently graduated from Coker College while being a full time mom and wife and who is pursuing a master’s degree at Webster University, was selected to fill the seat of Michael Hemingway, who did not apply for reappointment. Sylvia H. Holmes also interviewed for a seat but was not selected.

Additionally, the county board of education unanimously passed MSD7’s $5,287,640 and MSD1’s $17,414,480 budgets. Though the first motion for MSD2’s $12,085,952 budget failed, a second vote on the matter passed.

On the first vote, County Board Chairman and members Donnie Hill, Ritta C. Hennecy, Michael Hucks and Mark Sawyer voted against the motion and Board members Cynthia Legette, Ronald Bell and Levant Davis voting for it. After discussion, the board made a second motion regarding the budget’s approval, and that motion passed 6-1. Sawyer cast the lone dissenting vote in that motion.