As one of the younger candidates running for a seat on the Hamilton County Board of Education, Ken R. Smith said he has a vested interest in the schools.
The 38-year-old has learned about curriculum from helping his daughter, a seventh-grader at Normal Park Museum Magnet, with her homework. The challenges of classroom teaching he gets from his wife, a teacher at the school.
Both his wife and daughter started at Normal Park before the family moved to Hixson, which is the district Mr. Smith now seeks to represent.
“District 3 is in desperate need of an advocate in our community, someone who is willing to speak out publicly about the positive things in our schools,” he said.
Mr. Smith is up against Marty Haynes, 51, and longtime incumbent Everett Fairchild, 80, in the Aug. 5 county general election.
As the owner of Episode49, a local web design and development company, Mr. Smith said he has experience balancing budgets and using money wisely, skills that would come in handy as a board member.
“We need to make sure we’re getting the best out of every dollar we spend before we look at getting more,” he said.
“I don’t necessarily feel like money is just being thrown out the window, but I do feel that having somebody with experience of literally squeezing extra pennies out of every dollar, as I do on a daily basis running my own business, will definitely benefit,” he said.
Mr. Smith’s business won bids and has done website work for both the Times Free Press and the Hamilton County Department of Education.
He said there would be no conflict of interest in running for the school board because his company is not creating content for the school system’s website, and the design work he’s doing will be finished before the August election.
Teachers, Mr. Smith said, need more support in disciplining their students. He also favors evaluating them based on their students’ performance, as long as it’s more than just test scores.
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