Filing opens for 4 seats on county school board
By Bobby Bryant
Editor
editor@newsandpress.net
If you’ve thought of running for the Darlington County School Board and if you relish making probably the toughest decisions the board has ever had to make as our schools struggle with COVID-19, your moment has arrived.
Filing for four seats on the board opened Aug. 3 and will conclude Aug. 17 at noon.
On the November general-election ballot will be seats representing:
— District 2, covering the Society Hill area; the incumbent board member there is Connell Delaine.
— District 4, the Lamar area; the incumbent is Warren Jeffords, the school board’s chairman.
— District 6, south Hartsville; the incumbent is Charles Govan.
— District 8, north Hartsville; the incumbent is Jamie Morphis.
All the school board races are nonpartisan, said Hoyt Campbell, Darlington County’s elections chief.
Since March, the board has grappled nonstop with dilemmas brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Asked if the pandemic’s pressures would tend to keep challengers out of the race, chairman Jeffords said: “I don’t know. … You’d be jumping into the fire right now. There’s critical decisions to be made.”
Jeffords, who has served on the board for about 25 years, said he had been considering not running again, but said the crisis now was making him feel he should do another term. And in addition to the virus threat and its complications, Jeffords noted, the district is close to opening three new schools – in Darlington, Hartsville and Lamar.
At this point, Jeffords said, he’s planning to run.