Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
The Anderson Observer is interviewing school board members in contested races who were willing to discuss why they might be a good candidate.
This interview is with Dickie Smith who is running for the Anderson School Dist. 5 Seat 6.
Dickie Smith retired after 35 years in education, earning about $50,000 a year. Though he subsequently returned to work in the school district, when the subject turns to newer teachers beginning their careers at roughly the salary he once retired on, he does not sound aggrieved.
He thinks they should be paid appropriately.
The education required, the continuing training, the demands of the job are familiar to him. So are the custodians, maintenance workers and other employees whose contributions, he says, deserve better compensation. Smith said a school district begins with the people needed to make it function, then moves to the less visible complications: the bus that gets a child home late, the family unable to provide transportation to another campus, the heating and cooling system whose replacement could consume millions.
Smith, a former teacher, coach, administrator and school board member, is seeking Anderson School District 5’s Area 6 board seat. He currently works as the district’s community liaison person, a position he says has taken him into every school and brought him into contact with families needing assistance.
“I’ve been there before, and I think I can make a difference,” he said in an interview with The Anderson Observer. “I’ve got 50 years in the schools.”
His campaign rests on that accumulated experience. He supports renewing the school capital sales tax, opposes making school board elections partisan and wants more information before choosing among proposals to address Robert Anderson Middle School’s enrollment. He would also like trustees to spend less time at odds with one another and to make a clearer distinction between overseeing a superintendent and trying to perform her job.
“We should let her be the superintendent,” he said of School Dist. 5 Superintendent Brenda Kelley.
Asked about the district’s greatest challenge, Smith begins with poverty.
“The main challenge is what nobody wants to talk about, poverty,” he said.
He cites a district poverty figure of 63 percent, though he did not identify the measure behind that percentage. His argument is grounded less in the number than in what he says he encounters through his work with families.
Schools provide meals, attention and support during the day. For some children, going home means returning to limited resources. For others, it means parents working multiple shifts and having little time available, however much they might want to give it.
“And that’s not the children’s fault,” Smith said.
He sees consequences in matters that can otherwise sound like separate policy discussions. A family may have options about where a child attends school, for instance, but an option requiring a parent to provide transportation is not equally available to everyone. A working parent may be unable to leave a job to drive to another campus.
Transportation to and from an assigned school presents its own difficulties. Smith says some students are not getting home until 5:30 p.m. as the district works to recruit additional bus drivers. Retirement and insurance benefits are part of that effort, he said.
In Smith’s telling, these are not peripheral concerns. They shape what happens in the classroom, how much time remains afterward and what a family can reasonably manage.
Keeping teachers is another challenge. District 5 attracts good educators, he said, but competes with neighboring districts and communities with larger tax bases. Teachers need competitive compensation, appropriate class sizes and the backing of administrators and trustees.
His own retirement salary does not persuade him that the next generation should have to wait 35 years to reach it.
Smith is emphatic about extending the school capital sales tax. He is equally emphatic about what he believes people misunderstand about it.
“It is not an athletic penny,” he said.
He lists Chromebooks, activity buses, roof repairs, buildings, technology and other infrastructure needs among the expenses it helps support. Athletic facilities are part of the account, but he argues that their use should be understood more broadly than a Friday-night football game.
Students in track, marching band, soccer and lacrosse also use the stadium fields. Smith estimates that about 1,000 students at each of the district’s two high schools directly use them annually. Smith said the original artificial turf installations cost about $1 million apiece, with replacement surfaces roughly 11 years later costing more than $800,000 each.
Those are his estimates, as are the figures he offers for another category of expense: replacing major heating and cooling systems. Work at a school the size of T.L. Hanna High School, he said, could cost $10 million to $15 million.
A reserve account can look substantial until a district has to spend it. Smith points to such potential bills as a reason to save money before a system fails, rather than treat every unspent dollar as evidence that too much has been collected.
He estimates that personnel account for about 85 percent of the district’s budget and credits Kelley and district financial staff with managing expenses and putting money aside for future needs.
He wishes more residents would attend board meetings, to ask questions and seek explanations about spending. Smith said understanding a budget requires looking beyond its total to the obligations inside it.
On Robert Anderson Middle School, Smith is less definite about the remedy than the need to consider one.
He estimates enrollment at the school of between 1,050 and 1,100 students. He praises Principal Mike Noble and his staff and rejects portrayals of the school as disorderly.
“Everything runs smooth,” he said. “Mike Noble and his staff do an excellent job.”
The concern is scale. While a building may accommodate students in classrooms, there can be difficulties when everyone needs to assemble. He says the auditorium seats about 800 and that bringing the entire student body into the gym creates logistical concerns.
The district has discussed building another traditional middle school or constructing a separate arts school and returning Southwood Academy of the Arts to use as a traditional middle school.
Smith knows Southwood from an earlier incarnation, a time when taught there when it was a junior high school. But that familiarity does not amount to an endorsement of a particular proposal. Instead, he wants the superintendent to demonstrate which option best serves students and makes sound use of taxpayer money.
Smith also raises the possibility of examining attendance school boundaries and feeder patterns, taking care to distinguish a question from an adopted plan.
“I really don’t have an opinion on it right now, except I’m in agreement,” he said. “Yes, it needs to be addressed.”
His position is not that the present arrangement must remain and that recognizing a problem does not relieve a board member of comparing the proposed solutions.
Smith’s connection to Project Challenge Playhouse is both personal and professional. One of his children participated in the program, and his work at the district’s adult education facility brought him into contact with it.
He wants its opportunities for students preserved. He also wants more information about costs, available spaces and legal restrictions before committing to a particular arrangement.
The current location has practical shortcomings, including the need to use restrooms on a lower floor. The district should examine what the building needs and whether other facilities could accommodate the program.
Its status as an independent nonprofit raises another question for him: What assistance may the district legally provide?
“I’m all for working with Project Challenge to give them the opportunity to keep doing what they’re doing,” he said.
The willingness is clear. The form that assistance should take remains, for him, unresolved.
(Editor’s note: After this interview, the Anderson School Dist. 5 board entered into a potential agreement to sell the Project Challenge building, with no details provided.)
Smith describes a school board member as someone who listens, asks questions and helps determine whether a complaint concerns an individual circumstance or a districtwide problem.
He promised to bring residents’ concerns to the superintendent and discuss whether action was needed.
He said that is different from personally managing a school or evaluating its employees. It is also different from the expectation that a single trustee can immediately reverse a decision.
Some matters require a board vote while others can be handled administratively. Smith thinks residents should understand the distinction — and trustees should respect it.
He describes the current board as contentious and believes Kelley should have room to carry out her responsibilities while keeping trustees informed about important issues.
Smith does not present himself as a person without strong opinions and insists that strong opinions need not make cooperation impossible.
“You’re not going to get anything accomplished if you’re always at odds,” he said.
He says he would work with any trustee focused on students’ needs. Campaign assistance and personal relationships, he adds, would not determine his votes.
“I’m my own man,” he said.
That independence also informs his opposition to partisan school board elections. He said candidates should be judged on their ability to serve children rather than on a party label.
“They can be a Republican, they can be a Democrat, they can be an independent,” Smith said. “That’s their own choosing.”
He invokes his military service in explaining the position: He served, he says, to protect people’s freedom to make their own political choices. Party affiliation does not supply an answer to the problems he sees in schools.
“You’re voting for the person,” he said.
Smith grew up in Anderson. His father died when he was 4, and his mother, a teacher at Cleo Bailey Elementary School, raised him. Coaches and teachers also became important figures in his life.
He attended North Fant Elementary School and later served four years in the Air Force during the Vietnam War era. After returning, he completed his education and earned a master’s degree.
Across his career, he says, he taught in 11 schools. His subjects included history, driver’s education and physical education. Elementary physical education, much of it in schools serving the Westside area, was his favorite assignment.
School governance became part of the family’s history, too. His wife, Linda, served 12 years on the board, including during the contentious closing of South Fant Elementary School and related attendance changes.
They have two daughters and two grandchildren. Their granddaughter attended T.L. Hanna and the Anderson Institute of Technology, received a full scholarship to Anderson University and graduated with honors. She now works in a digital role at Brookgreen Gardens. Their grandson, 8, lives in Lexington.
Smith’s understanding of the district draws on all those connections: being a teacher’s child, becoming a teacher himself, raising children, watching a grandchild move through the schools and working with families whose experiences differ from his own.
He is seeking a place on a board that must weigh large expenses, competing proposals and persistent disagreements. His stated test for those decisions is simpler than the decisions themselves.
“It’s what’s best for the kids,” he said. “Not the adults, it’s the kids.”
