By Sam Prickett
For The Birmingham Times
Four new members and one incumbent were elected to the Birmingham Board of Education in the Tuesday runoff elections, reshaping the board from the one seated in 2013.
In District 4, incumbent Daagye Hendricks secured re-election while candidates Douglas Ragland (District 1), Mickey Millsap (District 5), Patricia McAdory (District 7), and Sonja Q. Smith (District 8) all were elected to their first terms.
They will join Terri Michael (District 2), Mary Drennen Boehm (District 3), Cheri Gardner (District 6), and Sandra Brown (District) — all of whom won election outright during the Aug. 22 municipal election.
In unofficial results:
District 1
Ragland, a former superintendent of Midfield City Schools received 2,319 votes or 51.73 percent to Small’s 2,164, 48.27 percent. Small, a political newcomer, is pastor of New Mount Zion Baptist Church.
Ragland has finished second in the runoff and had previously run unsuccessfully for the District 1 seat in 2011 and 2013.
District 4
Hendricks finished second to challenger Edward Maddox entering the runoff, but Hendricks captured 2,185 votes or 51.23 percent of the vote to Maddox’s 2,080 or 48.77 percent on Tuesday. Both candidates had previous board experience with Hendricks having served since 2013 and Maddox who had been a board member from 2009 to 2012 and board president from 2011 until he resigned in 2012 and stepped down as part of a plea agreement with the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office.
District 5
Michael “Mickey” Millsap received 2,570 votes, 56.58 percent, to David T. McKinney’s 1.972, or 43.42 percent. Millsap, who worked as a public school teacher in Sumter County, Alabama, had the largest lead of any school board candidate going into the runoff, having received nearly twice the number of votes McKinney, an educator in the Birmingham metro area for more than 10 years. That margin shrunk but Millsap finished first again.
District 7
Patricia McAdory received 3,055 votes, 60.01 percent of the vote to Walter Wilson’s 2,036, or 39.99 percent. McAdory had worked for several decades as an educator in the Birmingham city schools system; Wilson, who had previously mounted an unsuccessful campaign for city council in 2009, had served as a substitute teacher, assistant football coach, and parent-community coordinator in the Birmingham city school system.
District 8
While this race was separated by 75 votes when Sonja Q. Smith finished first in the Aug. 22 municipal election the runoff election on Tuesday wasn’t close. Smith, an educator, lecturer and mentor, received 2,837 votes, 63.67 percent, to Bozeman-Henderson’s 1,619, 36.33 percent. Bozeman-Henderson is the Job Readiness/GED Coordinator for the City of Birmingham Municipal Court.
