The race for Liberty County school board chairman will not need a runoff.

Current chair Verdell Jones garnered more than 50.1% of the votes cast in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary and will retain her seat on the board.

Jones received 4,381 of the 8,433 votes cast, or just shy of 52%. Challenger Kisya Burnett was second with 1,663 votes, or 19.7%. Former superintendent Dr. Franklin Perry received 1,244 votes, or 14.75%, and Tim King got 1,145 votes, or 13.6%.

“I am ecstatic,” Jones said Tuesday night. “I am so glad that the people are putting their trust in me once again. I’ll do the work to make sure our kids get a good quality education. There are some things we are going to have to do. We’re going to have put some leadership in place and professionally develop some folks. Education is important — it matters. We want to make sure our students are able to compete globally and have a good quality of life. I’m up for the work.”

Terry Cook received 604 votes to Charlene Rocker’s 345 and will replace Natalie Hines as the school board’s District 4 representative. Hines chose not to run for re-election.

In the race to succeed Donita Strickland as District 6’s representative, Richard Hayes outpolled Teresa Wiser 832-580. Strickland also declined to run again for the seat.

Dr. Chante Baker Martin had no opposition in her District 5 race.

School board races are non-partisan.

The school system is attempting to address shortcomings in literacy rates, which are not just a local problem, Jones noted. The National Assessment of Education progress puts the rate of fourth graders as proficient or better readers at just 31%.

“One of the first things we had to do when I came back on the board is we had to make sure we had the right leaders in the right place and doing the right work,” she said. “It took us a while to get to that point and get to the point where we are focused on literacy. This is a national problem. The nation is having an education crisis; but it doesn’t have to be in Liberty County. We have the things we need to build a good school system better. We’re doing some great and marvelous things now, but we can absolutely do better and we are.”