Promising to put students first in all his thoughts and actions, Warren County school board member Jeff Lee is formally announcing his candidacy for reelection as District 1 representative on the six-member board.
“I’m not running to put someone in a school system job or to get someone fired from the system,” Lee, a Main Street businessman and transportation broker, declared in the Southern Standard-WCPI candidate forum July 10.  “But I am running to try to support and encourage all of our 6,500 students and the teachers, staff and bus drivers who serve them every school day. I fully support our director of schools Bobby Cox. He has been an ambassador not only to our school system but to all of Warren County.”
“School board members have a profound, nearly sacred, responsibility for promoting the academic success and personal safety of every student.  Nothing should intrude upon or distract from that serious mission,” he continued.  “After all, the kindergarten to high school graduation experience pretty well determines the lifetime opportunities for every child.  That means we have to get it right the first time.”
First elected to the education governing board in 2010, Lee presently serves as the panel’s chairman.  Voters will choose board members in the first, third and sixth districts, each of which is comprised of two adjacent county commission districts, in the August 7 general election.  Early voting starts today, July 18.
While promoting student wellbeing and success is his overall priority, Lee said he is also committed to and is actively working on three specific goals—raising student academic achievement and ACT scores, ensuring the safety of all students and staff by placing SROs in each school, and renovation/expansion of Irving College Elementary School at its present site and the Bobby Ray Memorial School gymnasium.
The candidate has also been a leading promoter of the multi-sport training and wellness center at Warren County High School, a $1.1 million project that is awaiting approval from the county commission. “All of our sports programs need a place they can train and compete year round”. He has also been closely allied with the school system’s energy conservation program, now in its third year.  Concentrating on behavior modification such as turning off lights in unoccupied classrooms, the effort scored some $80,000 in utility bill savings in its first year, and ongoing equipment modernization will guarantee additional cost reductions well into the future, he said.
Lee has been closely involved in supporting students and teachers wherever academic performance was under threat.  With his leadership on the board, all schools in Warren County now have math and reading intervention specialists whose job is to work one-on-one with struggling students. 
“If a child falls behind in any grade, we’re setting him or her up for failure later on if we don’t intervene and address the problems swiftly and effectively,” Lee observed.  “I firmly believe that anyone in education leadership and policy-making has not just a formal but also a moral duty to help that child.  We expect every child entering pre-k or kindergarten to graduate on time and with the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed at the next level, but sometimes we have to work individually with students to make that process work.”
In each of the last four years, teachers and staff have been awarded raises and or bonuses, all with Lee’s support and encouragement.  Strong financial management in the school system, including the ‘right-sizing’ of teacher assignments and the continual balancing of staff duties, has made these pay boosts possible without a local property tax increase, he emphasized.  “Our first duty is to the students, but closely attached to that is the proper stewardship of the taxpayers’ investment in education.  We are morally obliged to do everything possible to achieve the very highest financial efficiency and integrity in delivering the teaching and learning process.”
Academically, the local system has seen improvements in third to eighth-grade math, reading, science and social studies, as well as scoring all A’s and B’s in achievement and growth in 2013.  He cites as another example of scholastic improvement the rescue of the high school from the state’s watch list in 2008 and 2010 to respectable status in the latest accounting period.  “It has been my honor to be a part of this turnaround in WCHS performance during my service on the board, and I heartily thank all the teachers and staff who made this possible,” Lee commented.
Lee is married to Sara, a second-grade teacher at Centertown Elementary School where she has taught for 25 years. They have two sons, Jacob, who is studying computer science at MTSU and David, who is studying business and playing baseball at Tusculum College.  Lee is a graduate of Carson Newman College with a bachelor of science degree and is former assistant football coach at the high school.