Two to run in November for seat on school board|[10/07/06]

Published 12:00 am Saturday, October 7, 2006

A veteran and a newcomer will be pitted against one another Nov. 7 in the race for a local school board seat.

Incumbent Zelmarine Murphy and her challenger, Avis Phillips, have filed to run for the District 2 position on the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees.

Phillips, 41, is seeking her first term on the board. She filed qualifying papers with the Warren County Clerk’s office late Friday.

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The deadline to file for the $2,400-year position was 5 p.m. Friday.

A graduate of Vicksburg High School, Phillips has a master’s degree in accounting from Mississippi College. She is a contract worker for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Intelligence Technology Laboratory.

She has five children – Renee, 28; Stedman, 26; Vicky, 18; Rich, 13; and Taylor, 12 – and is married to Jerry Phillips. She is a deacon at First Christian Church and is chaplain of the Vicksburg Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary.

&#8220I wanted to give people a choice for change,” said Phillips. &#8220I believe that school board members should have children in the district to accurately know what our children need.”

Murphy is seeking her fourth six-year term on the board. She filed qualifying papers with the Warren County Circuit Clerk’s office in early September.

Murphy is a 1962 graduate of Rosa A. Temple High School, and all three of her sons graduated from the Vicksburg Warren School District.

She is a graduate of Alcorn State University and the University of Louisiana at Monroe with a master’s degree in secondary education. Murphy has been teaching in the classroom since 1966. She has taught home economics in school districts in Tunica, Greenville and Madison Parish, where she has been for 31 years.

She was first elected to the board in 1988. She ran unopposed in the last election, which was in 2000.

&#8220I’ve seen the school district through good times and bad times. I’ve seen the ups and downs, but overall, this is a good district and I want to continue to be a part of it,” she said in September.

Terms for the five members of the board of trustees are staggered, so there is never a complete new board. The District 2 seat will be the only school board contest on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Other members of the board are Jerry Boland, District 1; Betty Tolliver, District 3; Jan Daigre, president, District 4; and Tommy Shelton, District 5.