AMERICUS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter’s path to the presidency started as a school board member, and his legacy still lingers in the schools where he launched his political career.
Take what happened at Sumter County High School in Americus this week. Dozens of civic, business and education leaders met for a discussion, planned months in advance, on the role that education plays in promoting rural prosperity.
But before they dug into a lunch prepared by culinary students, they paused to send prayers to Carter, who remains at home in hospice care.
“He’s a person of this place, completely rooted in this place,” Americus Mayor Lee Kinnamon said on Wednesday. “The leader of the free world can also come home and be completely engaged in an authentic way with his home people.”
Kinnamon taught high school history in Sumter County for 30 years. A student group he started, the Young Historians, interviewed Carter for an hour-long documentary film about the history of the largely Black community that surrounded Carter’s boyhood farm in southwest Georgia.
The underpinning for this week’s gathering — that education is linked to rural prosperity — would resonate with Carter.
As president, he created the U.S. Department of Education as a standalone federal agency. And he pointedly opted to send his daughter, Amy, to a public school in Washington, D.C. rather than enroll her in a private one as is customary for sitting presidents.
Carter joined the Sumter County School Board in 1955, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it illegal to segregate public schools. The school board seat was his first public office, a position he held for about seven years.
While on the board, Carter led a push to merge local schools, which he argued would improve public education for all students. But some in the community feared consolidation would turn into integration, and historians describe the failed 1961 referendum vote as “Carter’s first political defeat.”
Consolidation did come, eventually, though not without difficulties. In the 1980s, a legal battle ensued over a racially discriminatory school board elections system.
Plains High School, from which Carter graduated in 1941, closed in 1979. The stately building is now a museum and serves as a visitors center for the Jimmy Carter National Historic Park. One of its classrooms has been restored and furnished with wooden desks and an expansive chalkboard.
Plains students now board early morning buses and travel about 15 miles to the county high school in Americus.
The Sumter County School District currently enrolls 3,600 students across all grades. It serves predominantly Black students in a county where Census data shows the median household income is $36,687, significantly under the statewide median of $65,030. Because of high poverty rates, the district participates in a federal program that allows all students to eat lunch at no cost, according to the Georgia Department of Education.
Sumter County High School’s graduation rate in 2022 was 96%, an achievement it touts on its electronic entrance sign. Georgia’s overall four-year graduation rate is 84.1%.
But only about 30% of third grade students were reading at grade level or above, according to scores on the 2022 Georgia Milestones tests. The statewide average is more than double that. In eighth grade math, another closely watched academic benchmark, only 14% of students scored at a proficient or above level, compared to 36% across all Georgia public schools.
Superintendent Walter Knighton said it was fitting, given Carter’s public education legacy, that officials met this week to talk about how to support students equitably, remove barriers to learning and prepare graduates for college and careers.
Knighton said the challenge is to personalize learning and give students “authentic, engaging experiences that have real-life meaning.”
“We have to prepare our students for a 21st century, global society and that all starts with us in here being able to move ourselves forward here in Sumter County,” he told the group.
The district is in the midst of creating a five-year strategic plan, a vision that includes forging stronger connections between the school system and the community.
Amber Batchelor, CEO of the Sumter County Chamber of Commerce, said students entering the workplace will be looking for hybrid and remote jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities. The region needs agriculture workers, including farm managers, and others with skilled trades.
“We want to make sure that our students in Sumter County are being trained and coached and supported throughout the community so we’re developing that really strong talent pipeline,” she said.
Carter is “a man with an excellent work ethic,” Knighton said. “He would want, even in a time like this, for us to continue.”
