After months of consideration, the Gardner Edgerton Board of Education decided earlier this month to leave its open seat vacant until the 2027 election.
The board conducted three candidate interviews in May but couldn’t reach a consensus on who should fill the vacant seat for Position 6 in District 3, the northeast section of the district. The seat was left vacant when board member-elect Keith Davenport moved out of the seat’s boundary after he filed his candidacy and before the November 2025 election.
“While I know we would be better as a seven-person board, we keep kicking this can down the road,” said board President Tom Reddin. “To me, at this point, we’re going to be one year in and we’ve worked really well together. There’s been no drama, and it’s been nice working with this board.
“We’re halfway to that two-year point,” he added. “I really don’t see an urgent need to fill it, and I’m not even so sure we can come to an agreement and fill it.”
Board member Lana Sutton agreed.
However, board members Katie Williams and Heath Freeman lightly disagreed, expressing concern for when the board does have a split decision it cannot reach a consensus on.
Both Williams and Freeman added that filling the seat isn’t “a hill to die on.”
“I don’t know how many more times we’re going to come to those kinds of votes from now until next election, but it is very nice to have that seventh person to have so that the board rules ‘this is what it is’ and it doesn’t have to get tabled for who knows how long,” Williams said, adding that if the candidates are that dedicated to serving on the board, they can run in the next election.
Freeman then made a motion to bring the three candidates — Alisha Livingston, Terrance Flowers and John Lafferty — back in December for further questioning.
“I do feel as though we owe an opportunity to build consensus as a group in front of the public and discuss the candidates a bit further after learning more from them in another round of interviews,” Freeman said.
The motion failed 2-3, with Williams and Freeman voting for the measure and Reddin, Sutton and board member Julie Aldridge voting against. Board member Jeff Miller was absent from the Aug. 10 meeting.
Several board members made note of the questions asked in May and how similar they were. For Sutton, she believes no additional questions would change the board members’ minds.
“I don’t see it changing,” Sutton said. “We had the opportunity. Tom [Reddin] asked; there were some questions that were the same type of topic, but Tom had asked us to send him the questions and to have a variety of questions in case somebody else had asked something along those lines. I don’t think people did that.”
Williams suggested refining the process to help prevent such similar questions being asked in the future. Reddin agreed, suggesting the formation of a subcommittee to make recommendations.
“We did fine tune this at one point,” Reddin said. “But, I can see the need to do it more and come up with a subcommittee to further refine this and bring it to the board for a better process.”
How we got here
During the 2025 elections, Position 6 District 3 incumbent Greg Chapman faced challenger Keith Davenport. Davenport, however, moved out of the district before elections and after the deadline to withdraw.
With Davenport still on the ballot, he faced Chapman in the election — winning by a 24-vote margin.
Ahead of the election, Davenport said he would look for a way to still take the seat in the area he had left if he won 60% of the vote. Davenport defeated Chapman with only 50.23% of the vote, and Davenport subsequently announced that he would not accept the seat.
