LITTLE ROCK — The race for election Sept. 21 to the Little Rock School Board’s Zone 2 seat will feature a rematch of sorts between incumbent Micheal Daugherty and challenger Michael Nellums.
Nellums, who became principal last summer at Mills University Studies High in the neighboring Pulaski County Special SchoolDistrict, was the last candidate to file by the noon deadline Friday to run for one of seven open seats on the three school boards in Pulaski County.
The Daugherty-Nellums race will be the only contested race in the Little Rock district this year. John Gregory Adams is unopposed for the Zone 4 seat representing northwest Little Rock.He will replace incumbent Baker Kurrus.
In the Pulaski County Special district, Gloria Lawrence is challenging incumbent Charlie Wood for a four-year term to the Zone 4 seat that represents the Sherwood area. Tom Stuthard is challenging Danny Gililland from Zone 5, which encompasses north Pulaski County.
North Little Rock School Board incumbents Dorothy Williams of Zone 1, Ron Treat of Zone 4 and Bobby Gosser Jr. of Zone 6 each filed as candidates for their current seats and drew no opponents.
Because there are no contested races, North Little Rock district officials will take advantage of a money-saving state law that permits the uncontested elections to be conducted through early and absentee voting only. There will be no polling places open on election day in North Little Rock.
Nellums, 47, was one of three candidates who challenged Daugherty’s bid for re-election to the Little Rock board in 2007. Nellums was eliminated in the first round of voting that year, and Daugherty ultimately won re-election in a hard-fought runoff with challenger Anna Swaim.
“I’ve worked with the patrons of Little Rock, and they are facing a few challenges in the next five to 10 years, and I thought I might be able to help the schools in this zone and all kids across the district,” Nellums said Friday about running again.
Those challenges include academics and the advent of charter schools, he said.
The Little Rock School Board voted 4-3 this week against Daugherty’s motion to extend Superintendent Linda Watson’s contract for a year beyond its June 30, 2011, expiration date. That vote, however, could be reversed and the contract extended at any time during this school year.
“That’s the current board’s dilemma,” Nellums said. “If I’m elected, I’ll address it at that time. I’ll have to go along with the majority of the board’s wishes regardless of whether I’m part of the majority.”
The signatures on Nellums’ petition to become a School Board candidate included that of civil-rights attorney John Walker. Walker, who represents the class of all black children known as the Joshua intervenors in a 27-year-old Pulaski County school-desegregation lawsuit, was a strong backer of Daugherty three years ago.
Daugherty, 53, has served 15 years on the board and is seeking his sixth, three-year term in Zone 2. The zone encompasses an area of central Little Rock generally bordered on the east by South Woodrow Street, on the west by Interstate 430, on the north by Markham Street, on the south by Asher Avenue and Colonel Glenn Road and by Kanis Road at its western edge.
Adams, who is alone in seeking the other Little Rock board seat, is a father of two district children and the director of Pediatric Palliative Care Service at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.
The Pulaski County district’s Zone 4 race will be between Wood, 60, an electrical engineer and father to four grown children, including one in college; and Lawrence, 56, a mother of three grown children who has just retired from a 27 1 /2-teaching career in the district.
In Zone 5, Stuthard, 55, is married to a district teacher and is the father of two grown children. He is retired from the U.S. Air Force and now works for the U.S. Postal Service.
Gililland, 52, who is seeking a second term, is the owner of Popeye’s restaurants in central Arkansas. He and his wife, Lynda, have four children who graduated from district schools and are all now in college.
In North Little Rock, Williams, 65, who is a widow and the mother of a grown son, is a retired district teacher and assistant principal.
Treat, 61, is a North Little Rock businessman.
Gosser, 49, was appointed in October to fill the vacant Zone 6 seat, and he must now run for election to keep it. The father of three, including one district graduate and two now attending district schools, Gosser is vice president of Baldwin and Shell Construction Co.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/24/2010