The usually sleepy race for Georgia State School Superintendent has suddenly become one of the most hotly contested primaries on the ballot this next month. Incumbent Richard Woods faces four Republican challengers and a mutiny among GOP lawmakers, giving him the toughest election he’s ever faced.
At the root of the challenge to Woods is a sweeping new literacy bill, championed this year by Georgia’s Republican House Speaker Jon Burns, and vocal doubts among lawmakers that Woods is the right person to implement the bill at the state Department of Education, which he oversees.
The first serious signs of trouble for Woods came during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing last month, when one lawmaker after another asked why they so rarely see or hear from him despite the fact that they oversee funding for his department and consider education their shared top priority.
“I’ve been on this subcommittee for four years and was vice chair for two, and I’ve never had a conversation with you or anyone in your office,” said state Rep. Leesa Hagan, R-Lyons. “Every other agency’s director has met with us, has met with me, except for the big one, and that’s yours.”
State Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, was not a member of the committee but attended the hearing anyway because he said he wanted to register his frustration with Woods face-to-face.
“I don’t feel like I’m hearing you guys say we’ve got a literacy problem,” Carpenter said. “We’re the ones having to say, ‘The house is on fire.’ Well, the house is on fire.”
The fire Carpenter was referring to is Georgia’s persistently low reading scores, which showed just 35% of Georgia third graders attained grade-level proficiency or higher on state tests last year.
That number and others like it have long vexed lawmakers, so much so that Burns, whose wife is a former school principal, announced last year that raising Georgia’s literacy scores and overhauling how the state teaches young children to read would be his top priority.
Although staff from the Department of Education worked with lawmakers through the lengthy process to draft and pass the legislation, Burns and Woods never spoke — a highly unusual dynamic for an agency head with a major bill in front of the Legislature.
Two weeks after the session ended, Burns endorsed Candler County Schools Superintendent Fred “Bubba” Longgrear in the GOP primary instead of Woods. The move signaled his choice of a different leader to implement his legacy issue.
“I didn’t exactly endorse against Richard Woods,” Burns said in an interview. But he did endorse someone he felt the Legislature could work with. Longgrear is also the president of the Georgia Superintendents’ Association.
“This is all hands on deck, and we need someone who’s willing to engage and be a very, very positive part of these conversations,” Burns said. “And for me, and with the background I know that Bubba has, he’s the one.”
The day after Burns endorsed Longgrear, the chairs of the House and Senate Education committees endorsed him, too, followed by Senate Majority Leader Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas.
Multiple lawmakers I spoke with described Woods as friendly and likable. But they said he lacks the urgency required to face what they consider a generational crisis.
It’s important to say here that because Woods is elected by Georgia voters, and not appointed, it’s no guarantee that being at odds with lawmakers alone would signal doom for his campaign. He won his primary in 2022 with nearly 75% of the vote and defeated his Democratic opponent by 9 points. He even garnered about 4,000 more votes than Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Georgia’s high school graduation rate has gone up during his tenure, as have literacy rates in the state’s lowest performing schools. He has also pushed for increase teacher pay and expanded fine arts in schools.
But some others outside the Legislature have endorsed other candidates this year, too, including Frontline Policy Council. The conservative grassroots group endorsed “Change” over Woods in a news release earlier this month.
Along with Longgrear, Woods will face Republicans Nelva Lee, former state Rep. Mesha Mainor and Randell Trammell in the GOP primary before facing a Democrat in November — either Hancock County Schools Superintendent Anton Anthony, teacher Lydia Catalina Powell or former National PTA President Otha Thornton.
“We want Georgia to be an elite education system because that’s what’s good for thriving families, and we’re not that today,” said Cole Muzio, Frontline’s executive director. “After 12 years in office, I think it’s time for a change.”
Woods himself has stayed the course. During the House hearing that went so off track, he said the Milestones test that Georgia uses shows much higher third-grade reading levels than the numbers lawmakers were using. Even then, he said the state had prioritized other subjects ahead of reading in the past.
“On literacy, have we moved as fast as we want? Definitely not,” he said. “But we decided to take on math first. … It was a methodical approach there.”
That struck state Rep. Matt Dubnik, the Republican who led the panel, as one of many “empty answers” that day that he said reflected a general “lack of presence, involvement, engagement and responsiveness.”
In response to a request for an interview for this column, Woods’ campaign provided a written statement.
“In this final stretch, Richard is focused on meeting with and earning the votes of Georgians,” it read. Along with noting that Woods was the top vote-getter in Georgia in the last two elections, it concluded, “On Primary election night, results will show who Georgians endorse to keep education moving forward in our state — that endorsement is the one that matters the most.”
Early voting for the Georgia primaries has already begun. The election is May 19.
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