Lexington, SC (Paul Kirby) - Lexington resident Reese McCurdy says he has filed to run for Lexington School District One's Board of Trustees. McCurdy, a native of Alabama, lives with his family off US Hwy. 378 west of the town of Lexington in the Lake Murray area. McCurdy ran in a crowded group in 2018 but was edged out by two candidates in that race.
McCurdy is married to Julie and together they have four children who are students in Lexington District One Schools. He and Julie have a child at Rocky Creek Elementary School, twins at Beechwood Middle School, and one child who is a high school student who is currently following District One’s online learning path.
McCurdy is an insurance executive who sells Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance plans. Although he has been successful in life, he says much of how he lives today comes from his upbringing. His father, who died when McCurdy was 10 years old, was a farmer who worked from dawn to dusk to scratch out a living for his family and himself. His mother was a private school teacher who worked for many years earning low pay without any substantial benefits. When she retired, she received a simple Social Security check rather than a lucrative retirement package. McCurdy's brothers still own and operate the farm in Alabama today.
If elected, McCurdy said he would try to prompt the board to refocus on the students and teachers and less on facilities. “We need to run the school district like a business,” McCurdy said in a recent interview. “When you're in business you have to look at your return on investment. Every decision that the school board makes should be geared toward providing the best education possible for the taxpayers’ dollar.”
Regarding the state of the school district McCurdy said, “Currently, we are great at running the kids through the system. I think we are better at that than most other school districts in the nation. We need to work towards doing more than running kids through our system. For some students that works well but there comes a time when some students are being left behind. Those are the students that aren’t being best served by our current system,” according to McCurdy.
He believes that schools will never return to what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. McCurdy feels that online learning Is here to stay, and the district needs to continue to improve its infrastructure that supports online learning.
McCurdy says that it alarms him that some school board members are as uninvolved as they currently seem to be. He thinks that in many cases the board is simply rubberstamping one choice that the staff has already decided on. “If I am elected to the school board, I would make it clear that I cannot make an informed decision or cast a vote for anything that has just been put in front of me. I need to see details regarding what we're taking a vote on 24 hours prior to ever casting my vote for or against a project or program,” McCurdy said.
In closing McCurdy said, “Educating children is a very important business. In order to do that you need to have experience running a business. Additional experience running a business is what I can bring to the table.”
You can learn more about Reese McCurdy on Facebook at www.facebook.com/reese.mccurdy.14. You can also reach out to him by telephone at (704) 618-2057.
