Brad Owens is one of three school board candidates vying to unseat the incumbent of District 9, Venus Cain. The two are running against Delvin T. Howard and Thomas Gardiner.
Owens is a parent to a student in the district. He described himself as a businessman but declined to provide details. About five years ago, he was instrumental in bringing film production to Augusta.
Capital B and Local Matters of Georgia are teaming up to cover the District 9 race, one of the most important ones in Richmond County, because it is an at-large district, meaning voters across the county can choose the representative for this seat. Owens sat for an interview with Capital B Augusta.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Capital B: Can you tell me a little bit about the biggest issue you believe that the Richmond County school system is facing?
Brad Owens: Well, the biggest issue I think is we’re not teaching the things that kids need to know to get out of school and get a job to be able to raise a family, earn a decent living wage. So I think the curriculum needs to be overhauled completely because the job market is changing really quick because of AI, because of automation, because of the world, the global markets. You know, there’s lots of reasons to update the curriculum, but that’s the number one thing I think it needs to be done.
The other thing is, I think the superintendent and the attorney have too much power. I think the board trustees need to take power over the direction we actually want the school system to go in. We need to change it up, and I think having some trustees in there that are interested in putting some radical changes in place, some radical reforms on the curriculum and on even personnel. We need some personnel shifts. I think that’s a big problem. You know, kind of the superintendent runs everything, and the school board just kind of rubber stamps it.
When it comes to student performance, academic improvement, what would you do to improve it?
Well, like I said, the curriculum. The question is why aren’t they performing? You know, and you can’t really look at our school system that was designed in whole about 100 years ago and say that it fits our job market. And so the problem is if kids are bored and they don’t want to learn something, it doesn’t matter how many times you entice them or how many detentions you put them in, or if they’re not interested in what you’re teaching them, and they see no value in it at all, even for basic educational purposes, then you you don’t have their attention. If you don’t have their attention, they can’t learn. But also, the kids need discipline. That’s a big problem in our system, lack of discipline. But that actually starts with the staff and the administrators themselves.
What needs to be done to help keep students safe in Richmond County school systems?
Well, first things first. There has to be a structure for them to learn, and so there has to be safety and security first off. So I think first thing I would do is we need to reform the Richmond County Board of Education public safety, the police officers. We need to get a new chief in there. We need to put some policies in place because we’ve already found guns. I mean, they found guns on, like, the second day of school, and you know that’s not going to stop. It’s not going to stop until there is discipline on the students that break the rules, and there’s not going to be a structure or an environment that’s conducive for learning for the kids that aren’t the bad eggs. If you don’t get the other kids under control, and that also comes back to the parents. I mean, the reality is that the ultimate arbiter of whether or not the kid’s going to be a good kid or not in school is going to be the parents, the teachers, and the actual system itself.
Even if you got a kid that doesn’t want to behave and be disruptive, if you got good teachers that are backed up with a good system and parental involvement, you know we’ll be able to straighten that kid out. But first, I’ll tell you something, is that you got to make the children themselves the actual point of everything you do. If you put the kids at the top and you say, “I want them to be able to learn, and I want them to learn in a safe environment. I want them to have structure and discipline.”
If it’s something I want to do and it’s against the law — like, say that the federal law has said you got to do this, or the state law says you got to do that. I’d say sue them, sue them, get out from under it. We know what’s best for our children. Think some bureaucrat sitting in the Department of Education knows what’s best for our kids down here? No, they don’t. Nobody in Atlanta. Hell, I’d say the people sitting in the the head shed downtown on Broad Street don’t know what’s best for the kids in Hephzibah. Much less the people in Atlanta. So you got to have a willingness to make the changes, and see, that’s why I told people, I said, if you want if you want incremental change, I’m not your guy. OK, if you want radical, fundamental changes, immediately, I’m the guy.
