Pam Fredebeil said she wanted to respond to comments made by other candidates during a Pickens Republican Party meeting reported in last week’s Progress.
Fredebeil said she was unable to attend the meeting but wanted to have her views heard. She is running against Mark Mitton, Dan Fincher and Tracy Dobson-Cox in the July 20th Republican primary. There are no Democrats in the race, and no independents have picked up information thus far, so a GOP winner will take the seat unless an independent enters later into the race.
Fredebeil noted incumbent Mark Mitton has said he is proud of progress the board has made during his tenure. She added, “The schools may be better, but they are not where they need to be.”
Fredebeil, who has served on the high school’s Parent Advisory Committee said, “As there seems to be with many county offices, people desire a change. We need some fresh eyes.”
The candidate said she would like to see a new attitude involving less emphasis on punishment and more emphasis on rewarding students behaving well and achieving.
She said there will be some kids who will succeed no matter what, and others who will create discipline issues no matter what. But for that big group in the middle, more “pats on the back” and recognition for their efforts would go a long way toward keeping them in school and encouraging them to continue to behave well, she said.
“There is just a negative way of looking at things [at school] instead of a positive,” she said. “It starts right from the high school orientation, when they could be welcoming students in a positive manner.”
Fredebeil has a son who graduated from Pickens schools last year and two daughters still in the school.
The mother of three feels schools should encourage kids to consider college as an option from as early as the elementary grades.
“With the HOPE scholarship, people who have never been able to go to college, who come from families who have never had anyone go to college, can go,” she said. “We need to tell these kids you could be the first in your family to go to college.”
In response to another statement made by a challenger for the same office, Fredebeil said it is misguided to say the kids need to come first. “It’s the education for the kids that needs to come first,” she said.
She said the first focus needs to be the education produced in local schools. She said the Pickens school system should set standards to achieve or surpass national averages, not just state averages, as Georgia regularly trails the nation in educational comparisons.
“We are falling behind or barely ahead of state averages in math and science,” she said. She said Pickens schools aren’t arming students with tools they need to compete when education here is compared with that across the nation.
Fredebeil, who runs a property tax consulting service, said her company deals with large industrial and commercial properties and the taxes they are assessed across the Southeast. From this, she can see the impact of property taxes on counties, schools and taxpayers.
“I can see firsthand how tax issues affect people,” she said. But she said schools shouldn’t make cutbacks that will affect the children’s education.
Finally, Fredebeil said she wants to win a board seat to bring a “woman’s perspective” to the five-member board, currently all male.
“The moms are the ones in the schools on a daily basis,” she said. “The dads do help out, but the moms are in the trenches. They need a woman’s perspective on the board. I don’t want it to be all women, but we need some variety on the board.”
If you have questions for the candidate, please contact her at pam@sgsproptax.com |
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