VIDALIA — Two individuals are vying for the District 1-A seat on the Concordia Parish School Board.

Candidates are incumbent Fred T. Butcher and challenger Lillian Thomas King.

Fred T. Butcher

While currently working as athletic director for the Natchez-Adams School District, Butcher said his 39 years of experience in school systems gives him the qualifications he needs to continue to serve on the school board.

“I was born and raised in Ferriday,” he said. “And I have had most jobs you can have in the school system.”

Butcher said his list of positions includes: junior high assistant principal, high school principal, a biology and science teacher, director of academics, interim superintendent, maintenance supervisor and chairman of the finance committee.

“There is no substitute for experience,” he said.

Butcher said he believes the school board is headed in the right direction.

“Stability is very important, and financially we are fine,” he said. “Most of all I think overall our teachers have whatever they need to work with. They have the most recent technology to be effective in the global society we are competing in.”

Butcher said the school board does need to address the subject of standardized testing for students.

“Testing should be restructured and the state should change the way they fund local school systems,” he said. “More emphasis should be placed on teaching rather than testing.”

Looking back at where you are and looking forward to where you need to go is something Butcher said a school board member needs to do.

“You need to look at the weak areas first,” he said. “Mathematics has been a sore spot, not only here, but nationwide.”

Butcher said reading is another subject in which area students are having a problem.

“In order for reading to improve we need some continuity,” he said. “We need some form of summer continuance for students.”

Lillian Thomas King

King said she wanted to be on the school board after attending various youth programs in the area.

“Watching our community of children who cannot read and write is disheartening,” she said. “We need to help the education in the school system.”

King said, though she doesn’t have direct experience with the school district, her love and compassion for people in the community is the key. She currently works as a bank teller.

“I deal with people every day, and I am almost like their bartender,” she said. “I hear their cries for help about their children.”

Parent-teacher involvement is an area in which King said the school system needs improvement.

“I would like to see parents involved more outside of the school system,” she said. “There has not been enough people involved in the community outside of the four walls of the school.”

Remembering to keep the focus on the children is something King said she will bring to the school board if elected.

“The most important role of a school board member is that when we vote, we vote for what is right, and not what is easy,” she said. “It is our children who are our future. If we fail them, we fail ourselves, and we fail God.”

King said the education of the children, and not the education of the people on the school board, is something that should not be overlooked.

“Where we take our children in the future will determine whether they will be strong or weak,” King said. “And that will be made by the choices the people on the CPSB make.”