Published: June 30, 2008 11:17 am            

Murray Board of Education District 1: Ricky Mallett

Rickey Mallett says the safety of Murray County students would be one of his top concerns if he is elected to the Board of Education.

Mallett says he’d like to see more security cameras added at schools. And he says schools might benefit from having a “smart card” system to control who enters school buildings.

The Murray County native faces incumbent Julius Weyman and James Ash in the July 15 Democratic primary for the Distract 1 seat. No Republican qualified for the seat.

This is Mallet’s first run for office, and he says it’s important to him that all Murray County students receive an education that will help them achieve their goals.

“My wife, my daughter and my son-in-law are all educators in the Murray County school system,” he said, adding that two of his grandsons are also currently students in the school system.

“I’ve got a pretty good interest in the school system,” he said.

Mallett, 53, says cutting Murray County’s dropout rate will be one of his priorities.

“We need to work more with the parents and the students to raise their awareness. Technology is the future. What it can do is amazing. But if you don’t learn and go with the times, we’re in trouble,” he said.

Mallett, who has been employed by the Georgia Department of Transportation for 29 years, gives the school board credit for moving meetings around to different schools. But he says the school board should also try varying the times of its meetings, holding some later in the day and maybe some earlier, because different times are inconvenient for different parents.

Mallett says he is concerned by the number of meetings the school board has been holding.

“They have a lot of meetings that maybe are uncalled for,” he said.

School board members currently make $50 per meeting.

Mallett suggests that school board members should just receive a flat fee for their service “whether it’s one meeting or 100 meetings.”

The school system’s current annual operating budget is approximately $58 million and it has more than 1,200 employees.



(Editor's note: Incumbent school board member Julius Weyman refused to be interviewed.)

        

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