Recently-elected Clarke County School District Board of Education Vice-President Dr. Tawana Mattox sits at the Jan. 16 BOE meeting. Board members voted to elect Antwon Stephens as the representative for District Two, and Mattox believes Stephens will perform well in the new role. “I happen to know his grandparents. I knew his grandmother very well, very committed, and this young man is very committed. This young man has done everything he said he did, he actually did in terms of making his community better,” Mattox said. Photo by Owen Donnelly
The Clarke County School District Board of Education voted to place Georgia’s ninth congressional district candidate Antwon Stephens as representative of District Two on Jan. 16.
At the Jan. 16 Clarke County School District Board of Education meeting, self-employed political strategist and Georgia’s Ninth Congressional District-candidate Antwon Stephens was elected to serve as CCSD District Two representative in a 4-3 revote after eliminating District Two candidate Giovanna McDavid.
In addition to the election of Stephens as District Two representative, District Eight representative Dr. LaKeisha Gantt was re-elected as BOE president, and previous BOE vice-president District Three representative Linda Davis was replaced with Mattox.
Stephens, a 23-year-old 2014 graduate of Cedar Shoals High School previously ran for mayor of Athens Clarke County in 2018 and says that his primary focus will be to ensure the security of schools in the CCSD.
“I’m just hoping that I can bring a little stability and unity moving forward. One of the big things I’m going to concentrate on is school security, being that I was a spokesperson for March for Our Lives Georgia,” Stephens said. “Gun violence is one of the things that’s near and dear to me, losing so many family members to that, so I want to make sure that the school system is safe moving forward with, of course, all the mass shootings happening across the country.”
District One Representative Greg Davis believes lack of experience may be a prohibiting factor for Stephens.
“When we talk about experience, decades and decades of being involved in the school system, someone who is in their twenties will not have that experience,” Davis said.
District Nine representative Dr. Tawana Mattox feels that having a younger person on the BOE might bring a new and welcome perspective.
“I believe one thing we are missing is having a younger person on the board,” Mattox said. “I really feel a younger person would definitely add to this Board, having that perspective, being a person who has recently graduated from our district who’s lived here.”
