Teresa Jones Named Principal at DeKalb Middle School (View Video of School Board Meeting)

July 12, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

A year after being named assistant principal at DeKalb Middle School, Teresa Jones is moving up.

During Thursday night’s regular monthly meeting, Director of Schools Patrick Cripps included on his monthly personnel report to the Board of Education that Jones is the new principal at DeKalb Middle School succeeding Caleb Shehane who has resigned.

Jones has just finished up her first year as assistant principal. Before that she served 20 years as a seventh-grade science teacher at DeKalb Middle School.

Teresa started her teaching career in 2002 after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Tennessee Tech. During the pandemic in 2020, Jones decided to obtain a master’s degree in Instructional Leadership. Teresa was also chosen as Teacher of the Year for DMS and at the district level in 2020.

Meanwhile, those employed by Director Cripps since the last Board of Education meeting are as follows:

Jessica Leiser, Bookkeeper at DeKalb West School.

Hannah Bratten, Music Teacher, DeKalb Middle & DeKalb West School

Sydney Simmonds, Kindergarten teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Andrew Christian, teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Stephanie Majors, teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Brian Smith, teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Terri Kilgore, Special Education Secretary

Elizabeth James, teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Brandi O’Conner. Educational Assistant at Smithville Elementary School

Hannah Culwell, teacher at Northside Elementary School

Jennifer Sykes, teacher at DeKalb Middle School

Leave of Absence

Crystal Barnes, leave as requested

Transferred

Teresa Jones, from Assistant Principal to Principal at DeKalb Middle School

Max Patterson, Band Director

Shelia McMillen, from Special Education Secretary to teacher at DeKalb West School

Taylor Chapman, from Educational Assistant to teacher at Northside Elementary School

Brandi Womack, Bookkeeper to Educational Assistant

Resignation/Retirement

Brooklyn Shirah, gifted teacher, resigned, County-Wide

Tiffany Bjorge, Educational Assistant, resigned at Northside Elementary School

Ryan Childers, resigned, Maintenance County-Wide

Sarah Storey, teacher, resigned at Northside Elementary School

Kayla Randolph. Educational Assistant, resigned at DeKalb West School

Victoria Stanley, teacher, resigned at Smithville Elementary School

Emily Harville, teacher, resigned at Smithville Elementary School

Caleb Shehane, Principal, resigned at DeKalb Middle School.

Meanwhile, DCHS educator Barbara Weller was granted tenure by the board during Thursday night’s meeting.

In other business, the Board voted to change the monthly meeting times from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. and the workshops from 6 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the second Thursday night of each month starting in August at the Ernest Ray Education Center.

July 12, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

Should DeKalb County borrow up to $65 million through the issuance of general obligation bonds for the development and construction of a judicial center/jail?

The voters of DeKalb County may get to answer that question at the ballot box in the November election but even so they won’t be able to force a repeal of the 51-cent property tax increase for debt service levied by the county commission with passage of the 2024-25 budget last month.

With less than a week until the deadline for turning in signatures, organizers and volunteers of a petition drive Thursday afternoon turned over to County Clerk James L. (Jimmy) Poss, as required by law, names of 2,471 presumptive registered voters who have signed that they want a public referendum on the bond issue. Aside from those submitted Thursday, Poss said another petition had already been turned in to him a few days ago with eight names and others are possibly still being circulated in the community. Poss said he will accept other petitions that may come in prior to next week’s deadline before he is required to turn them all over to the election commission, which has a limited time frame for checking and verifying the signatures.

Petitioners are concerned, upset, and in some cases downright angry with the county commission and county mayor for saddling them with a 51 cent tax hike, only a year after imposing a 27 cent increase, and for taking action to borrow money to build either a new 190 bed jail or more likely a judicial center that many don’t want or believe is needed.

As part of the bond resolution, the public was given 20 days to file a protest from the date of publication of the notice in the newspaper which was Wednesday, June 26.

“The public has 20 days from the date of publication to file with the county clerk a petition signed by at least 10% of the registered voters of the county (1,361) protesting the issuance of the bonds”, the public notice stated.

Although the signatures still have to be verified the petition effort with already at least 2,471 names appears to have more than exceeded the 10% threshold in order for the protest to proceed to a referendum.

The petition drive was launched last month only a couple of days after the county commission approved an initial and detailed resolution authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds not to exceed $65 million for the development and construction of a judicial center/jail as well as the 51-cent property tax increase for debt service to fund it. In each case, the commission was deadlocked on the vote at 7 to 7 but County Mayor Matt Adcock, as Chairman of the Commission, cast the tie breaker in favor of passage.

Jon Slager, a DeKalb County native and Lascassas resident and attorney, assisted in organizing the petition drive and in a prepared statement Thursday said he is pleased with the overwhelming public response.

“On behalf of the people that asked me to assist with this, thank you to everyone who worked so hard supporting this petition. The response by the people of this county has been overwhelming. Because of the hard work of so many, nearly double the number of signatures required have been obtained, and the deadline is still several days away. Ultimately, the DeKalb County Court Clerk will send all the petitions to the election commission next week and that is who will do an official count,” said Slager

“The people I got to speak with over the last few weeks had a genuine concern about the real costs of a sixty-five-million-dollar criminal justice center. Even at an interest rate of just four percent, that sixty-five million dollars would balloon to over one hundred and ten million dollars. Then where does the money come from for the additional costs of nearly doubling the corrections staff? Are the taxpayers also being asked to pay over three-hundred thousand dollars to Steve Bates (county’s fiscal agent) for issuing these bonds? What about the threat of imminent domain and taking someone’s property? The true costs of this project are staggering and will undoubtedly leave other necessary projects unfunded for decades without additional future tax increases,” added Slager.

“When is it ever wrong for the public to have a voice in government decisions,” said Dennis Stanley, one of the volunteers in the petition drive.

“I saw the people’s voice in action. The days I helped with the drive the people who signed the petition were of various ages and socio-economic backgrounds. As expected, comments varied on what to do with local tax revenues from building a new school to better roads, but a criminal justice center did not appear to be high on their priority list”.

“In short, the people were obviously not happy with recent actions of the county commission as evidenced by the number of signatures on the petition, he added.

County Commissioner Beth Pafford, another volunteer in the petition drive, downplayed her role saying only she wanted the public to be aware of it.

“My involvement in this was minimal but I felt I had to let the people know that they can do something about this,” said Commissioner Pafford. “I feel strongly we have other options that we have not explored thoroughly enough and this plan with this much money for 30 years is what people have a problem with. If all of these petitions are cleared, people can vote to decide whether they want the county to move forward with taking out the $65 million bond that would be paid off over 30 years to support a new jail and justice center,” she said.

The action by the county commission and mayor to move forward last month came after months of discussion and planning to address long standing deficiencies at the jail and annex as defined by the Tennessee Corrections Institute in order to maintain state certification.

July 10, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

Early voting begins Friday, July 12 for the upcoming August 1 elections through July 27

Early voters may cast ballots at the courthouse in Smithville during a six-hour period on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. and Tuesdays from 12 noon until 6 p.m. Early voting on Saturdays will be from 9 a.m. until 12 noon as in the past. No early voting on Sundays.

In Alexandria, early voting will take place on two dates, Tuesday July 16 from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. and on Tuesday, July 23 from 12 noon until 6 p.m. at the Kenneth Sandlin Center on the DeKalb County Fairgrounds.

Meanwhile, the election commission has released the sample ballot for the elections on Thursday, August 1 which will include the DeKalb County General Election, Municipal Elections in Smithville, Dowelltown, and Alexandria, and the Tennessee Republican and Democratic Primaries.

Sample Ballot

The deadline to update an address on voter registrations is Friday, July 26.

All the local Republican nominees from the March primary will be unopposed in the DeKalb County General Election including Incumbent Assessor of Property Shannon Cantrell, Sixth district incumbent school board member Jason Miller, Fifth district school board candidate Megan Moore; Constable candidates 1st District: Tyler Cripps, 2nd District: Danny Adamson, 3rd District: Incumbent Travis Bryant, 4th District: Incumbent Lane Ball, 5th District: Incumbent Mark Milam, and 7th District: Jeremy Neal, and Judge Shawn C. Fry for the newly created Criminal Court Judge position in Part III of the seven-county 13th Judicial District.

For the county commission to fill unexpired terms, Andy Pack in the 6th district and Mathias Anderson in district 7 were recently nominated and certified as Republican candidates through the local GOP caucus process and their names will appear on the August 1 ballot.

The Smithville Municipal Election will be uncontested on August 1. The three incumbent aldermen up for re-election, Shawn Jacobs, Danny Washer, and Jessica Higgins will be running unopposed. The terms are for four years each.

Only three people qualified for the Alexandria Municipal Election ballot on August 1. In this election, the positions to be filled are for mayor (unexpired term), three aldermen, and three other aldermen (unexpired terms). Beth Tripp will run for the unexpired mayor’s term while Jeff Ford is seeking to fill an unexpired alderman term and Jonathon Tripp is running for a full alderman term. No one qualified on the ballot to run for the other positions.

No one qualified to run in the Dowelltown Municipal Election on August 1 in which a mayor and two aldermen are to be elected.

The following have filed a certificate of write-in for the following offices, but their names do not appear on the August 1 ballot:

Constable- District 6:
Keith Elkins

City of Alexandria:
Mayor
Allen Lawson
Russell “Rusty” Bradshaw

Alderman
Bobbie Ford

Robert “Bobby” Simpson

Lucas “Luke” Prichard

Curtis Rutter

The August 1 ballot will feature two State Judicial Retention questions as follows:

Shall Dwight Tarwater be retained in office as a Judge of the Supreme Court At Large or be replaced?

Shall Matthew J. Wilson be retained in office as a Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, Western Division or be replaced?

In the Tennessee Republican Primary on August 1 the candidates are as follows:

United States House of Representatives District 6: John Rose

United States Senate: Marsha Blackburn and Tres Wittum

Tennessee Senate District 16: Janice Bowling

Tennessee House of Representatives District 40: Michael Hale

In the Tennessee Democratic Primary on August 1 the candidates are as follows:

United States House of Representatives District 6: Lore Bergman, Clay Faircloth, and Cyril Focht

United States Senate: Marquita Bradshaw, Lola Denise Brown, Gloria Johnson, and Civil Miller-Watkins

Tennessee Senate District 16: Wayne Steele

Tennessee House of Representatives District 40: Daniel T. Hawthorne

State Executive Committeewoman District 16: Rupa Blackwell.

Sample Ballot

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