After 8 years on school board, Hilton Head rep JoAnn Orischak won’t seek re-election
JoAnn Orischak, the District 11 school board representative for the Beaufort County School District, has announced that she will not seek re-election in November.
Orischak, who has represented the south end of Hilton Head on the school board since 2012, said that she committed to a “self-imposed” term limit when first elected — and now, at the end of her second term, she’s hit that limit.
“I think there’s a place for new voices and new positions to come forward,” Orischak said. “But you do acquire new experience and new knowledge as time goes on, and that’s invaluable. It’s a shame to lose that.”
Orischak is the second board member to announce she won’t run for re-election in November, when four seats are up for grabs. Okatie and Sun City representative John Dowling said in December that he would not seek re-election, citing the “very taxing” nature of the position.
Four districts will see a school board election in November:
District 1, which covers the northern tip of Beaufort County, including Sheldon, Lobeco and Gray’s Hill, represented by Earl Campbell.
District 6, which covers most of Okatie and Sun City, represented by Dowling.
District 9, which covers southern Bluffton and Dafuskie Island, represented by board chairwoman Christina Gwozdz.
District 11, which covers the south end of Hilton Head Island, represented Orischak.
Orischak said she doesn’t have immediate plans to run for another office. She also said she hopes her replacement is someone with a financial background “who understands the public’s business needs to be done in public.”
“I haven’t had anybody approach me yet or say that they’re interested in running,” she said. “But someone will emerge, I’m sure.”
A legacy ‘against popular thought’
Behind Campbell, who has sat on the school board for 30 years, Orischak is the board’s longest-serving member. In 2012 and 2016, she ran on the same platform: district transparency, accountability, student achievement and board reform.
“When I ran back in 2012, I was a parent whose children had all come up through our schools,” she said. “I had an education background with an elementary ed degree, so I think I was accepted as a candidate because I brought that to the table.”
Under controversial superintendent Jeff Moss, Orischak was a member of the school board’s minority bloc, which frequently opposed Moss and fellow board members, for several years.
She was an early critic of the district’s 2015 hiring of Moss’ wife, which would result in an investigation and an “unintentionally guilty” ruling by the South Carolina Ethics Commission against Moss.
Orischak said she felt “honored” that she was re-elected in an unopposed campaign in 2016 following that controversy, which she called “a great learning experience.” Asked about her proudest moments as a board member, she pointed to votes against positive performance reviews for Moss, which she said were “very, very difficult, to go against popular thought.”
She also opposed the district’s 2016 and 2018 school bond referendums, which both failed; she supported the successful 2019 referendum, in part because of Moss’ 2018 resignation.
She said one of the biggest regrets from her tenure was her “yes” vote to approve a multimillion-dollar expansion to the construction budget for May River High School and River Ridge Academy. The vote, she said, took place right after an executive session where board members heard about the expansion plan for the first time.
“The board has been put in a number of positions to vote on issues with limited access to documentation and information,” she said. “Historically I’ve noticed that has been a pattern. And I regret that in my earlier, more naive days as a board member, I felt the pressure and would provide a vote.”
The FBI is now investigating the construction of both schools, as well as Moss. Orischak also filed a complaint against Moss with the S.C. Ethics Commission in 2018 regarding economic interest violations, for which he was found guilty and fined $7,000 in November.
Since Moss’ 2018 resignation, frequent dissenters Orischak and Dowling have continued to take minority positions on the board. Orischak said Tuesday she’s not sure how new board members will “fill that void.”
“I think every board member should question anything that goes against their understanding of what is right,” she said. “Each of us represents a different pocket of the county and brings those ideas forward. And they shouldn’t be viewed as contrarian, but sometimes they are, and that’s unfortunate.”