Dorchester County, S.C. - Dr William Shane Robbins was selected by the Dorchester District Two Board of Trustees as the next Superintendent to take over for Joe Pye. When Pye announced his retirement the board began their search and narrowed down to 19 candidates. the board interview all 19 candidates and narrowed their search to a top 3.
Read his full bio here.
Tonight's vote was 5 for and 2 against with Brian Mitchum and Justin Farnsworth voting against. Mitchum tried to delay the vote until community survey numbers were made public and his motion was defeated.
Dr Shane Robbins was praised by Gov McMaster for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as the Superintendent of Kershaw County, as one of the few counties who never mandated masks or locked down schools while also keeping cases low.
Dr Robbins still managed to improve reading and math scores during the pandemic when DD2's number slid as a result of lockdown and hybrid Covid policies that caused children to fall behind.
According to sources close to the situation Mitchum and Farnsworth who are both up for reelection this year, had been making politically motivated attacks on Robbins for the past few weeks in a subtle effort to pressure Robbins to resign. Mitchum and Farnsworth were the leading voices for mask mandate policies and lockdowns in DD2.
Tonight Farnsworth repeated previously debunked misinformation about Dr Robbins tonight before the vote. Farnsworth and Mitchum used subtle and passive aggressive remarks in an attempt to have him withdraw his name from consideration. Mitchum in a previous meeting asked him with no explanation why Robbins withdrew his name from consideration in another district job, in an obvious attempt to suggest he do the same in this situation.
Tonight Farnsworth had no substance in his criticisms of Robbins, so instead chose to attack his record of serving in multiple districts as superintendent. Fellow board member Barbara Crosby responded to Farnsworth by saying Farnsworth has had 4 different jobs in less than 10 years so he had no room to speak on Robbins growing and moving up to larger school districts as his skills improved.
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