Thad Mayfield
Thad Mayfield was the District 9 member of the DeKalb County Board of Education in Georgia. He won the District 5 general election on May 20, 2014, but lost to newcomer Vickie B. Turner in the runoff election on July 22, 2014.
His District 9 seat was eliminated in the May 2014 election when the board shrunk from nine to seven seats.[1] He was first appointed to the board by Governor Nathan Deal on March 13, 2013.[2]
Prior to Mayfield's appointment, Governor Deal removed six members of the DeKalb Board of Education from office after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools placed the school district under "accredited probation" status. This was due to an audit that revealed issues with board governance, unethical practices and fiscal mismanagement.[3]
Biography
Thad Mayfield resides in DeKalb County, Georgia. Mayfield received his B.A. in political science from Tougaloo College earning his MBA from Mercer University. He spent 10 years working for AT&T as an account executive and business portfolio manager and another six years as a sales and customer business manager with Guoxin Lucent Technologies Network Technologies.
Since 1998, Mayfield has been employed as a senior partner with FOCOM, Inc., which is a business management and consultant firm.[4] From 1985 to 1990, he served as a member of the South DeKalb New/More Schools Initiative grassroots initiative. He also served three terms as a member of the Georgia Commission on Equal Opportunity from 1989 to 1993.[5]
Elections
2014
Thad Mayfield and Vickie B. Turner defeated challengers Pia Bhatti, Jesse Cunningham and R. Alexander Fitzhugh for the District 5 seat in the general election on May 20, 2014. Although the District 5 seat normally carries a four-year term, this election was for a two-year term. Turner defeated Mayfield in the runoff election on July 22, 2014.[6]
Cunningham was the District 5 member of the board from 2006 to February 2013.[7] He was removed from office by Governor Nathan Deal, who appointed Mayfield to replace him.[2]
Results
Runoff election
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonpartisan |  Vickie B. Turner |
59.7% | 5,194 | |
| Nonpartisan | Thad Mayfield Incumbent | 40.3% | 3,500 | |
| Total Votes | 8,694 | |||
| Source: Georgia Secretary of State, "General Primary/General Nonpartisan/Special Election - July 22, 2014," accessed February 23, 2015 | ||||
General election
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonpartisan | Thad Mayfield Incumbent |
36.1% | 4,407 | |
| Nonpartisan | Vickie B. Turner |
28.1% | 3,436 | |
| Nonpartisan | Jesse Cunningham | 27.6% | 3,372 | |
| Nonpartisan | R. Alexander Fitzhugh | 4.5% | 549 | |
| Nonpartisan | Pia Bhatti | 3.8% | 460 | |
| Total Votes | 12,224 | |||
| Source: Georgia Secretary of State, "General Primary/General Nonpartisan/Special Election - May 20, 2014," accessed July 10, 2014 | ||||
Funding
Mayfield reported $1,173.00 in contributions and $798.56 in expenditures to the DeKalb County Department of Voter Registration and Elections, which left his campaign with $374.44 on hand.[8]
Endorsements
Mayfield did not receive any endorsements during the election.
Campaign themes
2014
Mayfield published a list of his priorities on his campaign website:
| “ | Vision: A DeKalb County school system that ensures all students master critical skills and cultivate their natural abilities, in a safe and open environment that maximizes the quality of their learning experience.
Mission: Create a high performing school system Goals: A) Create a school system that strengthens the student-teacher bond and makes it easy for parents and communities to work with each school. B) Build strong parent and community relationships with each school to get the ideas, volunteers, and funding needed to best equip our classrooms and prepare our students for a global future. C) Strengthen our school system's leaders and administrators to make continuous improvements in academics and to be more responsive to the DeKalb community, at the least practical cost to tax payers. Immediate Priorities: 1) Increase graduation rates with confirmed students results, 2) Implement a measurable school system strategic plan, 3) Implement results driven parent and community engagement plan for each school, 4) Improve training and performance of school leaders and monitoring of entire system 5) Collaborate to implement proactive economic development and tax base management plans[9] |
” |
| —Thad Mayfield campaign website (2014)[10] | ||
In an interview with 90.1 WABE, Mayfield answered several questions outlining his campaign themes:
| “ | Why should voters choose you? What makes you stand out as a candidate?
Voters should choose me because I care and I am committed. I am a collaborator and can support and get the support of my peers. Ultimately, I get positive results. Equally as important, I am visionary about the outlook for our children and our school system. Finally, among my challengers, I also uniquely understand the leadership and governance challenges of our county and believe I can contribute to a way forward. What are some of the biggest educational challenges facing the district? How can you, as a board member, address those issues? I think the biggest challenge facing our school district and constituents in District 5 is one of culture – multiple unaligned paradigms. We don’t conduct ourselves as if we have a comprehensive and collective understanding of the challenges we face or the opportunities we have to overcome the challenges and excel, how we can and must collaborate, and consequently how to move forward. As a board member I believe I can help address those issues by first getting and sharing information based clarity about our performance as a District and how that performance impacts the quality of our daily lives. Secondly, I have a broad set of county-wide relationship that I believe can be convened to set a tone for common ground and mutual progress, instead of what appears to often a tone of mistrust, misaligned expectation, and zero-sum gamesmanship. Until recently, DeKalb was on “accredited probation” due mainly to concerns about school board governance. The district recently improved its status to “accredited warned.” But DeKalb still has a long way to go. As a board member, what will you do to ensure the district keeps improving? The short answer to ensure the district keeps improving is to complete the 6 Required Actions (RA) the District has and establish a monitoring and reporting protocol for all fourteen RA for the next 3-5 years. During that time and for the long-term, I believe we need to integrate the criteria associated with the RAs and SACS standards into our District ongoing and routine evaluations of its performance in ways that show material impacts on academic, financial, Board, Administration output. According to the Georgia School Boards Association, individual board members don’t have the authority to make decisions about the district. That authority lies with the board as a whole. How will you work to ensure the board makes decisions together instead of pursuing individual agendas? This is a fundamental question, my top priority following the academic and financial performance, culture of the District. The answer is essential to our success, not simply in mitigating the concerns of SACS, but in setting a cultural tone and accountability for high expectations and high performance. I am actively working with board members off-line and in Board Retreats to address that very issue. My contribution to the effort is to encourage the Board as a body to establish a base set of standards that reflect our combined priorities from which to begin all deliberations and decisions/votes. I expect and certainly hope that this approach will begin to solidify our common ground and help to work through and resolve our differences.[9] |
” |
| —90.1 WABE interview (2014)[5] | ||
In response to a questionnaire conducted by It's For Them - DeKalb, Mayfield answered several questions outlining his campaign themes:
| “ | 1. What is your understanding of the role of a school board member? In your answer, explain (1) the level of engagement that a board member should have in the affairs and operations of the district and, (2) the relationship between the board and district staff.
My understanding of the role of a school board member includes the following: i.Set the vision and direction of the school district ii.Establish school district policies iii.Establish the budget for the school district iv.Hire the Superintendent The level of engagement that a board member should have in the affairs and operation of the district should be one of strategic direction through the strategic plan, and oversight and accountability of the administration through the Superintendent for performance b.The relationship between the board and district staff should be one of approving senior level staff assignments, cordial and professional in our interactions with all staff, and requests only through the Superintendent and/or as advised by the Superintendent 2. Explain your views on the current state of transparency of information at DCSD. I believe the current state of transparency of information at DCSD needs improvement. The four major challenges are timeliness, completeness, and clarity of information communicated to the public and on occasions the timeliness of special reports requested by individual board members. 3. How would you inspire parents and other stakeholders to have confidence in DeKalb schools? I would inspire parents and other stakeholders to have confidence in DeKalb schools by the following:
4. What skills, talents, and personality traits do you believe that you possess that would make you work effectively with the rest of the board to get things done? Overall, the skills, talents, and personality traits that I believe I possess that would make me work effectively with the rest of the board are as follow:
5. How will you enhance the mix of skills and backgrounds on the board and help represent the diversity of the community? I will enhance the mix of skills and backgrounds on the board and help represent the diversity of the community, as I already do, by reaching out to and engaging a broad spectrum of ideas and input from all segments of the DeKalb community. I will synthesize the best of that input in making as many decisions and votes I take as often possible. I will encourage all segments to actively participate in public forums and discussion as possible, including and perhaps especially those with English as a second language. 6. What do you see as the opportunities and threats facing the DeKalb school system? I see a number of opportunities and threats facing the DeKalb school system, but the most significant ones to me are as follow:
7. Describe the achievement gap in this district. What causes it? What can be done? Four DeKalb County schools received gold, silver or bronze medals in U.S. News's Best High Schools rankings. However, the system has a 59% overall graduation rate (lowest in metro Atlanta) and SchoolDigger ranks the district as # 134 of 162 in the state. I translate this to mean that DeKalb has the capability to a national high ranking school district when we align micro-level assessments and our resources (funding and trained personnel) with our own best practices. 8. The next school board will likely be tasked with selecting a new superintendent. What will you look for in a candidate? In selecting a new superintendent, I will look for a candidate with competencies and proven skills and successes in governing and managing within large, complex education organizations (ex. K-12, collegiate); and a strong record of performance in academics, business management improvements, and parent and stakeholder engagement. 9. What is your experience with reviewing complicated budgets? How will you approach the district’s budgetary process from a policy perspective? My experience reviewing complicated budgets includes reviews during three terms on the Georgia Commission on Equal Opportunity and for the past 7 year as a current Commissioner on the Board of the Lithonia Housing Authority. My corporate experience includes preparing budgets for AT&T sales and marketing organization and Lucent Technology budgeting for market management, and Product Research and Development. Both experiences included profitability planning and projections to support and justify the budgets. This means that I bring experiences to review, assess, and align the efficacy of budget expenditure. I will approach the district's budgetary process from a policy perspective by adhere to current budgetary policy to ensure a balanced budget, and look to establish policies for quarterly review and alignment of the financial reviews with correlating academic and departmental performance. 10. What needs to be done to ensure the district regains full accreditation, without probation, and what is the role of the board in ensuring DCSD remains in excellent standings with SACS? To ensure the district regains full accreditation, without probation, and remain in excellent standings with SACS I think the board needs to do the following three things: a) Ensure that we complete outstanding Required Actions (RA) 3, 6, (new) 12, 13, and 14 b) Establish monitoring and reporting policies on the maintenance and performance by the District on all 14 RAs c) Establishes clear definitions and policies on monitoring and reporting of the Districts health on all SACS accreditation standards, including how they are manifested in other District performance metrics such as academic and organizational performance[9] |
” |
| —It's For Them questionnaire (2014)[11] | ||
Recent news
This section links to a Google news search for the term "Thad + Mayfield + DeKalb + County + School + District"
See also
External links
- DeKalb County School District
- Office website
- Campaign website (dead link)
- Facebook page
- LinkedIn page
Footnotes
- ↑ 90.1 WABE, "DeKalb School Board Races Draw Crowded Field," March 18, 2014
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Governor Nathan Deal - Office of the Governor, "Deal names new members of DeKalb County school board," March 13, 2013
- ↑ CBS Atlanta, "Governor Deal Suspends DeKalb School Board Members," February 25, 2013
- ↑ LinkedIn, "Thad Mayfield," accessed July 15, 2014
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 90.1 WABE, "DeKalb School Board District 5 - Thad Mayfield (Incumbent)," accessed July 15, 2014
- ↑ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Big slate of candidates for crucial school board election," March 7, 2014
- ↑ Re-Elect Jesse "Jay" Cunningham, "About Jay Cunningham," accessed May 15, 2014
- ↑ DeKalb County, "Individual Campaign Contribution Disclosure Reports," accessed May 28, 2014
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Thad Mayfield, "Vision," accessed July 15, 2014 (dead link) (dead link)
- ↑ It's For Them - DeKalb, "Candidate Name: Thad Mayfield," accessed July 15, 2014
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