Suzanne Hallman, seeking the Bulloch County Board of Education seat in District 3, hopes to expand in this way on the attention and involvement she has brought to the education of her own children, which includes serving on parent-teacher organizations and chairing a school council.

This is the one currently contested seat on board that does not have an incumbent  running. Current District 3 BOE member Dr. Stuart Tedders did not seek re-election, and his term ends Dec. 31. Instead, Hallman and Jennifer Campbell Mock are contending for  the office.  Precinct voting places open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday.

Hallman and her husband Jake have two sons. One is 12 and now completing sixth grade at Wiliam James Middle School; the other will soon be 9 and finishing third grade at Julia P. Bryant Elementary. Both are in the QUEST program.

“We kind of push them to live up to their potential, and that’s why I think it’s important to be involved,” Hallman said. “That’s why I try to be there, so I can get  to know their teachers and principals, the administration, you know, and I like knowing what’s going on. I like being a part of what’s going on.”

Having volunteered with fundraisers and activities of the Parents and Teachers Organization at Julia P. Bryant Elementary, she says the PTO at William James Middle is not as active but that she also tries to help there when she can. Since last fall Hallman has chaired the School Council at JPB Elementary.

Hallman, originally from McRae where she was a 1999 honor graduate of Telfair County High School, started at Middle Georgia College through dual enrollment, and transferred to Georgia Southern University, where she attained both a bachelor’s degree in human resources management and a Master of Business Administration.

She now works as director of business operations for Georgia Southern’s Business Innovation Group, based in downtown Statesboro. Besides her school volunteering, she previously served six or seven years on the board of directors of the Downtown Statesboro Development Authority.

Hallman said she became interested in seeking the Board of Education seat while seeing what the board and school district went through with the COVID-19 pandemic and then some of the community reaction to tax increases.

“When I don’t understand something, or why something works a certain way, then I really want to try to understand more, and there’s things that have happened on our school board in the past that, not understanding completely why certain decisions are made a certain way, I wanted to get involved to make sure that our kids have representation.”

She notes that some current board members “don’t even have kids in the system.”

‘It starts with the kids’

“So who’s representing the kids and who’s representing the teachers?”  Hallman said. “Oftentimes too you hear from teachers that feel like they don’t really have a say, that the school system doesn’t listen to them or that they’re afraid to speak up sometimes. So I feel that it’s really important to get involved whenever you feel led to do so.”

Where the school system budget is concerned, she asserts that more of the public’s attention should be “with the kids” and what will provide them the best education, not on reducing taxes.

“I understand nobody wants to pay more taxes, but nobody is really talking about how, if you look at the school systems around us that are doing really well and excelling, that people want to be a part of … Bryan County and Effingham, people talk about ‘they have really good school systems’ or ‘their sports teams are hard to beat,’” Hallman said. “Well, their taxes are much higher than ours, so they’re putting more into those systems, and you get back what you put into it.”

Bulloch County’s property tax millage rate, she said, is still lower than it was a decade ago. That is certainly true of the school tax millage, which was 9.95 mills in 2013 and 9.848 mills in 2014, but 8.478 mills for 2023.

“We push things off and the county, the commissioners, the school board, try to keep things  as  low  as  possible, but there comes a point where, with  inflation, with different  things in  the economy causing prices to rise, it’s going to come back and you’re going to have to invest in the areas that  are truly important, and like I said, education is where it all starts,” Hallman said. “It starts with the kids.”