Category: Education

Note: This is the fifth story in a series by Athens ISD profiling the seven members of the Board of Trustees.

By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist

A girl born in Bunkie, Louisiana, into a large extended Cajun family is bound to have personality to spare. Alicea Estelle LeBlanc Elliott certainly does. “My mother is the youngest of 11, and all my aunts spoke French,” she said, clearly proud of her heritage.

Elliott grew up in Beaumont, spending two weeks of every summer in Louisiana, and graduated from Lamar University with a degree in accounting. Her career in the corporate business world has informed her experience as a Place 2 member of the Athens ISD Board of Trustees. Originally elected in 2011, her current term expires in 2017. Elliott’s three children — Dustin, Brittani, and Alexandra — are all Athens High School graduates.

When she made the decision to run for a place on the board three and a half years ago, it was her youngest child, Alexandra (then a senior), who helped her mother take the plunge. Continue reading “Elliott’s Business Background Guides Her Service on AISD Board”

Note: This is the third story in a series by Athens ISD profiling the seven members of the Board of Trustees.

By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist

Bob Spears grew up in Irving, played left wing on the soccer team in high school (“Though I’m not a left winger,” he jokes) and went on to earn a banking and finance degree from Abilene Christian University. He has been a member of the Athens ISD Board of Trustees since 2001 and currently serves as board secretary. His term on the Place 7 seat expires in 2016.

Spears’ path to Athens was a circuitous one, influenced in no small part by the turbulent banking climate of the 1980s. He spent most of that decade working at a bank in Sweetwater. “Then energy crashed, savings and loans crashed, everything was going downhill,” recalled Spears. “So I found a bank in Fort Worth with no energy loans, no farm loans, and I thought it had to be the perfect setting. All they had, in 1987 when I went to work there, were real estate loans. That turned out not to be a good thing.”

Spears shifted between the banks in Sweetwater and Fort Worth a couple of times until he was recruited in 1989 by what was then First National Bank of Athens. Eventually, he was again recruited, this time in 2005, to manage First State Bank of Brownsboro’s new Athens branch. He has been there ever since “and along the way got elected to the school board.” Continue reading “Spears Says AISD is Stronger for Having Weathered ‘Storms’”

Note: This is the second in a series by Athens ISD profiling the seven members of the Board of Trustees.

By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist

Eric Smith’s first lessons in leadership and community service were learned by watching his father, Tommy Smith. The elder Smith served eight years as mayor of Athens, 11 as county judge and established a successful and still-prospering lumber yard business.

Today, Eric and his brother, Aaron, run Smith Lumber Company. Eric Smith has taken up the mantle of community works by, among other things, serving on the Athens ISD Board of Trustees, representing Place 5. His first tenure as a district trustee ran from 2005 until 2008, when he chose not to run for re-election. He resumed board membership last year when he was appointed to fill an unexpired term.

Smith and his wife, Tracye, have a sophomore, Samantha, at Athens High School. He graduated himself from AHS in 1988. “Ours was the first class to go a full year at the new high school and graduate,” he said. Continue reading “Smith Continues Tradition of Community Service”