In Pender County, Republican Ken Smith is running against Democrat June Robbins for Board of Education in District 4. The seat opened this year when Katherine Herring, who had served on the board since 1990, passed away. This is not Smith’s first run for public office.
He’s the Mayor of Atkinson, North Carolina, and Pastor of the Atkinson Baptist Church. Since Hurricane Florence hit, Ken Smith says he’s been more involved in recovery and rebuilding than running for the school board.
He wants to increase school safety efforts in the county.
“Right now not every school in Pender County has a resource officer. I pledged that when if all is said and done working with the sheriff's department, working with the county commissioners so that every school in our county has the resource officers there that can at least respond if we have an act of terrorism on one of our campuses.”
He also says school board members need to do a better and more diplomatic job of working with county commissioners to secure more funding for the Pender County school system.