Kimsey Jackson's Late-Life Path From School Board Critic to Education Advocate

Jackson, the outgoing chair of the Transylvania County School Board, looks back on his history of public service and his experience as the oldest school board member in the state.

Kimsey Jackson pictured on a rocking chair at his home near Brevard. He’s not ready to while away his days there, he said.

BREVARD — The back porch on Kimsey Jackson’s house near Brevard offers a stunning view of the French Broad River Valley and a comfortable seat on one of those old symbols of retirement ease, a rocking chair.

But even at age 90, Jackson isn’t ready to settle in and reminisce. He’s too busy thinking about the future of Transylvania County Schools.

The current plan to make $91 million worth of repairs to district schools over the next five years leaves Jackson, chair of the county School Board, with grave concerns about pouring money into antiquated buildings.

And though he has been wrongly cast as a proponent of school consolidation, he said, he strongly supports hiring an independent expert to explore it.

“Do we have the correct number of schools? Are they in the right place? Are they properly constructed, not only for today but for the future?” he said in an interview at his home this week, listing questions that would be answered by such a study.

“I think that desperately needs to be done.”

Putting aside the unlikely prospect of the Board taking this matter up in the next few weeks, Jackson won’t have a vote. His time in the public positions he’s held since moving back to Transylvania from Florida about 20 years ago — member of two local planning boards, serving four years as the oldest School Board member in the state — have already, or will soon, come to an end.

But even though Republican voters decisively rejected Jackson’s bid for re-election in the March primary, the people who worked with him or watched him closely describe him as a remarkable figure, a model of productivity and engagement for aging retirees.

In their frequent conversations since Jackson was named chair, said Schools Superintendent Lisa Fletcher, he seldom makes demands of staff, but “always says, ‘Let me know if I can do anything.’ He always looks to help.”

Republican Board candidate Ruth Harris, the former chair of the county party, called him a “very dear person” who has provided a “great service” to the county.

He has impressed former Democratic School Board member Alice Wellborn not only with his grasp of complex issues but his evolution from a hardline budget hawk into a powerful advocate of public education.

He stood up for the Board in its funding battles with the County Commission. He strongly favored initiatives such as the expansion of the Schools’ NC Pre-K program.

“I have seen him learn a lot about schools and teachers and what kids need,” Wellborn said. “I’ve seen him become much more non-partisan, become much more part of the group that’s interested in schools and wanting to do the best for teachers and students.”

Forming His Views

Jackson isn’t so sure about this narrative of transformation. His support of public schools and fiscal conservatism, he said, are a result of long-held convictions shaped by his youth and career.

He was the youngest of three brothers supported by a father — a logger, farm laborer and, just maybe, Jackson hinted, a part-time moonshiner — who didn’t really achieve financial security until he was hired by the now-shuttered Ecusta paper mill.

Jackson took his first job as an eighth-grader, washing windows at the old Belk’s department store in downtown Brevard and worked his way through North Carolina State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1956.

He was immediately hired by Florida Power & Light and moved to the state with his now-deceased wife, Joan, who would later embark on a longtime career as a teacher. Together they raised a son and two daughters and helped launch them into successful careers.

He rose to be the manager of the FP&L division serving Broward County, the second-most populous county in the state. It was great preparation for serving on the Board, he said, requiring him to navigate relationships with employees, elected officials and the public, and to manage a $40 million operations budget as well as construction projects that were sometimes just as expensive.

“In every case, I had to sit down and defend that budget,” he said.

On the Board, he always kept in mind that public funding comes from taxpayers and “doesn’t just fall from somewhere,” he said. “I think it needs to be spent responsibly. I haven’t changed in that regard at all.”

Moments later, he choked up when talking about the tolerance he learned from his older brother, who served as bombardier in Italy and North Africa during World War II.

His runs were escorted by the African-American Tuskegee Airmen, according to Jackson, “and he said, ‘I didn’t care what color they were as long as they kept those German fighters off our tail.’ ”

He later bucked considerable resistance at FP&L when he pointedly hired black and women employees to diversify a workforce that was then overwhelmingly white and male.

“I’ve always believed in treating people fairly,” he said.

And considering how much public education contributed to his own success, he has always been aware of its value, of its responsibility to serve every student “who comes down the pipe,” he said.

“We can’t say, ‘We don’t want that kid, he’s got funny-looking hair.’ ”

Budget Hawk

As a Board member, he sometimes stuck to the party line, siding with two other Republican members and the majority of attendees, for example, at a raucous School Board meeting in 2021 when he voted to maintain the district’s mask-optional policy.

But he offered a nuanced view of another right-wing priority, last year’s amendment of the Schools’ policies to conform to the state’s recently passed Parents’ Bill of Rights.

Providing parents with more information about their children’s education is a good thing, he said, but he also said the requirements added to the already heavy workload of teachers and administrators who were already accessible to parents.

“To say that parents couldn’t interact with schools before is false,” he said.

The issue that consumed much of the Board’s attention during the last four years remains the main issue in this year’s election for both the Board and the County Commission — funding for school fixes.

And, yes, when it comes to this need, he did learn, he said, and maybe his position did change.

He was alarmed, he said, when he first read about the 2015 report recommending $118 million in upgrades, including the extensive remodeling of campuses in Brevard and Rosman later targeted in the bond referendum approved by voters in 2018.

The story about the report appeared in the Transylvania Times “out of the clear blue sky,” he said. “And I said to myself, ‘Holy cats, those schools must really be falling down.’ ”

During his first unsuccessful run for the Board in 2018, he told its members he had long paid taxes in Florida for education, that he had no children or grandchildren attending school in the district and that he doubted he would vote for the bond referendum.

“I got attacked for that,” he said.

Wellborn remembers him pledging that, if elected, “he would be our worst nightmare,” she said. “It was just kind of a really negative, aggressive public comment, taking the School Board to task.”

Advocate

But when Jackson later toured the schools, he said, he saw what he hadn’t been able to see as an outsider — that some of the most expensive needs, including the replacement of ancient boilers and failing HVAC systems, were also some of the least visible.

Once elected, he also came to understand the complexities of school finances, its reliance on an array of state and federal funds as well as money from the county.

He has since come to a surprising conclusion that, besides not immediately pushing for a full-time project manager to oversee the bond projects, the Board erred by asking voters not for too much money, but for too little.

“It wasn’t enough,” he said.

He has become convinced that the Commission was responsible for many of the delays in the bond work, seeking to leverage its power over funding bond projects to take control of the money’s use. And he has forcefully disputed county statements about school funding that he considered misleading.

There was his public challenge, at a Commission meeting in August, of County Manager Jaime Laughter’s statement that the Board had approved spending for a new wrestling gym and other recreation projects as part of a list of high-priority work.

He wished he’d done the same after hearing Laughter’s response in May to a request from the Board for money to either expand or maintain the number of slots offered in its NC Pre-K classrooms.

Laughter told commissioners that the North Carolina State Constitution would require the county to make such services available to all children under five years old regardless of income at an added, cost-prohibitive annual expense of $13.5 million.

In response to a follow-up question about this position in June, she wrote that this duty was required by a constitutional clause that says “public funds are to be used for public purposes in a just and equitable manner.”

But Kara Millonzi, professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s School of Government, wrote in an email that she was “not aware of any constitutional requirements that mandates a county to fund all Pre-K students.”

“Counties are not required to fund Pre-K programs,” she wrote, “It is up to the county commissioners to determine whether to fund and at what level.”

“I was sitting there thinking, what in the world is she talking about,” Jackson said about listening to Laughter’s argument. “I regret that I didn't get up and say, ‘That was a great presentation. However, it doesn't have any application to what we're doing here.’ ”

What Now?

Did such positions hurt him with Republican voters? Was he too moderate? Or did they think that, at his advanced age, he wasn’t up to four more years on the job?

He’s not sure, though considering the crowded field of Republican School Board candidates, he doesn’t believe he received the full backing of the Transylvania County Republican Party. (Current chair Jeff Brewer did not respond to requests for comments left at party headquarters.)

Despite the job’s frustrations and his reservations about the current plan to fix schools, Jackson is satisfied with his work on the Board.

He is glad to see that the bond money will finally be used for upgrades. He’s proud that he cast the deciding vote to hire Fletcher in 2023.

“We’re leaving them with an excellent superintendent,” he said of Board members, three of whom will be newcomers after the election. “I just hope they’ll have the sense to let her run the place.”

But Jackson also feels fully recovered from a minor stroke he suffered in January. He looks trim and fit. He still has knowledge and judgment to offer, he said. He will still be able to contribute to the community after his term on the Board expires, he said, and after he completes the maximum time allowed for service on the Transylvania County Planning Board in January.

Maybe he’ll ramp up his involvement with the First Baptist Church of Brevard, where he has been a longtime member. He used to be active in the Rotary Club of Brevard, he said, and maybe he’ll reengage.

And he certainly likes the idea of resuming his old role as an outsider speaking up at School Board meetings.

‘I've thought about it and I thought, ‘Man, now I can be on the other side of that public comment.’ ”

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