The vote is in.
Alfred “Shivy” Brooks made history Tuesday evening by becoming the first active teacher to hold a seat on the Atlanta Board of Education in its 150-year history, after winning a special runoff election with a commanding 64.6% of the vote. Brooks will join eight other school board members who oversee the Atlanta Public Schools, attended by over 50,000 students.
The economics and government teacher at Charles Drew High School in Clayton County beat incumbent Tamara Jones in the race for the District 7 At-Large seat, tallying 9,002 votes, compared with 4,933 votes (35.4%) for Jones.
For Tuesday’s runoff election, Brooks overcame Jones’ narrow lead in the general election on Nov. 7. She garnered 12,996 votes (48.6%), just ahead of the 12,764 votes (47.3%) for Brooks. A third candidate, William Sardin, a nurse and Air Force reservist, received 1,214 votes (4.5%).
Because no candidate received more than 50% of the vote in the general election last month, the top two candidates, Brooks and Jones, were forced into a runoff. Sardin, who conceded, later went on to endorse Brooks ahead of Tuesday’s election.
As expected, voter turnout for the runoff — as for the general election — was low, with only 13,935 Atlanta voters returning to the polls for the second matchup. That’s about half of the roughly 26,500 voters who turned out on Nov. 7 for the school board race, making up less than 10% of Atlanta’s registered voters. The five school board candidates were the only races on the ballot, which was a big reason for the low turnout.
In a profile by Capital B Atlanta earlier this year, Brooks said his three top priorities would be hiring a superintendent, increasing literacy and math proficiency, and increasing teacher pay so educators can afford to live in the communities in which they teach.
“When you get culture in alignment, then you get literacy in alignment, you get proficiency in math in alignment,” Brooks has previously said. “You get people bought in and committed. I think that’s what we need more than ever.”
However, the campaign trail for both candidates wasn’t without drama as tempers flared on social media in the final days after Brooks alleged Jones used the death of Brooks’ son, Bryce, as a means of political gain.
The 16-year-old junior student at Maynard Jackson High School tragically died in April after attempting to save four younger children while swimming on vacation at Perdido Beach, Florida.
Brooks was responding to a mailer sent by Jones’ campaign that depicted two apples — one labeled “a parent” and the other “a politician” (wearing Shivy’s signature hat).
“We have gotten to the point that my opponent is using the death of my son, who sacrificed his life to save 4 other APS children, as an opportunity to say that I am not an Atlanta Public School parent,” Brooks posted to Instagram on Dec. 1 to his 86,000 followers.
In an emailed statement to Atlanta Civic Circle, Jones responded that it was “quite a stretch to interpret that [mailer] as me saying that he’s not a parent.”
Since his son’s death, Brooks has started the Bryce Brooks Foundation, which aims to provide free swimming lessons to Black youth across Atlanta.
Brooks will join Ken Zeff (District 3), another newly elected school board member, as the only two males among the nine members. For the five board positions up for election this year, three female incumbents kept their seats on Nov. 7: Katie Howard (District 1), Erikah Mitchell (District 5), and Jessica Johnson (Seat 9 At-Large).
In 2025, the even-numbered school board districts will be up for election, along with the Atlanta mayor and City Council.
The new board will officially convene in January.
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