ST. MATTHEWS – Staying true to his Libertarian roots and reputation as a political gadfly, the new chairman of the Calhoun County District School Board has come out swinging at the education establishment right off the bat.

In the two months since he won election to the nonpartisan Calhoun County District School Board – and 30 days since he took over as chairman – Tom Arant has refused to attend the training required by the state and had threatened not to sign off on the issuance of a $33 million school bond, before finally relenting.

“If the voters want someone to fight for them, I’ll win. If they want more of the same, I am not the person they want,” Arant said in a letter to the editor of The Calhoun Times published shortly before the election.

He did not return telephone calls from The Times and Democrat seeking comment on his election as school board chairman.

However, Arant, who is a former teacher in the school district, has a long record of espousing personal freedom and property rights during various appearances before Calhoun County Council on such issues as building codes, land use regulations, the manufactured home ordinance and the county’s comprehensive plan.

Arant, who has run for County Council several times, stunned Calhoun County voters, first by winning the District 2 trustee seat previously held by Eliza Claxton in the November general election. Without a public campaign, he defeated community leader Ike Holman by 12 votes. Claxton did not seek re-election to the district seat.

Then, with only three of the five board members attending the December session, Arant and Debra Fredrick nominated and elected themselves chairman and vice chairman, respectively.

According to Debbie Elmore, communications director for the South Carolina School Boards Association, all new school trustees are required by state law to attend a new board member orientation training program within one year of their election. And, while there is no enforcement of the requirement, she said that “if you don’t go, it is reported on the district’s report card.”

Trustee Michael Drake, whom Arant replaced as chairman, said Monday that he’s baffled by Arant’s announcement that he won’t attend the training.

“I can’t figure it out. He hasn’t gone to the School Board Conference, the certification for all new school board members. I called and congratulated him when he won,” and told him about the conference, Drake said. “By state law, you have to be certified. ... He’s refused to go. ... And, as board chairman, he needs to know what the guidelines and responsibilities are. ... If the Legislature passes a law and says you have to go to the conference, it’s for a reason. ... Why is he so defiant?”

Arant, in a letter to The Calhoun Times in November, contended that he had “already saved the taxpayers hundreds of dollars by refusing to go to Hilton Head for the state-required orientation designed to train me to be their ’rubber stamp.’ Rather than thinking of it per capita and saving every man, woman and child in the county a nickel, I prefer to think I saved one struggling person’s home.”

Continuing, Arant wrote that he didn’t run for the school board to join some “elite social club that meets in exotic places.”

“I did it to save the educational process and our children’s future. If this meeting was serious business, it would have been held in Columbia or some other central location,” he said. “It is a simple way to wine, dine and brainwash the newly elected board members at the expense of the state’s slaves (that would be us).”

The training had been held in Columbia, Elmore said, but, when it was realized that over 80 percent attended the Hilton Head conference held a month later, the association combined the two as a cost-saving measure.

“It does include policy and curriculum and state laws that boards have to oversee. It isn’t a social club,” she said. “It’s good information board members have to have to be effective in their jobs. These are groups that oversee budgets that are the largest budgets in some counties. It does require training.”

Then, there’s the matter of the bond issuance, an issue Arant also addressed in another letter to the editor two weeks ago. Although opposed to the bond that would provide a new school but close two others, the chairman described his dilemma.

“When I decided I wanted to be school board chairman, I knew I had to sign all documents which the majority of the board voted for, whether I agreed with the decision or not. It comes with the job. As the time came closer to sign off on the closing of John Ford and Guinyard and spending $33 million, my stomach got tied in knots,” he said. “I felt that, if I refused to sign, the only ethical thing to do would be to resign the chairmanship.”

In the end, Arant wrote, he was convinced by others that, if he resigned as chairman, his replacement would sign the bonds anyway.

“The only thing that would change is that I would no longer be in a position to do something about my major concern, the education of our children. Therefore, I signed the bonds,” he said. Arant said he signed the bonds as chairman, not as an individual.

“Since I have been on the board, nearly everything has been about logistics, bricks and mortar and money, none of which have much to do with education,” he said.

Putting the education bureaucrats at the state and federal level on notice, Arant’s letter continued:

“If the objective of both the federal and state bureaucrats, that try to bully and intimidate the local school boards, was to improve education, they have been a miserable total failure. If, however, their objective was to crush all creativity, make things look good on paper and make both students and teachers hate seeing the sun come up, they have not only earned their outrageous salaries, they deserve a raise.

“The educational bureaucrats, as of yet, don’t have a clue what happened along the banks of the Congaree and Santee Rivers on (election day). The process of rescuing the educational system from their insidious grasp has begun.”

Veteran school Trustee Gary Porth said Tuesday that Arant’s background and stance on Libertarian issues will make for an interesting board.

“Basically,” Porth said, “he’s telling me he’ll vote against anything the state says he has to do.”

But, while Arant can vote any way he wants as a board member on an issue, as chairman he has no choice in the duties he is to fulfill.

“If any time in the year, if he strays from those duties,” Porth said, “then he would be derelict in his duties.”

T&D Government Writer Tucker Lyon can be reached at tlyon@timesanddemocrat.com or by calling 803-533-5545.

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