Renee Geter is tired of seeing South Carolina at the bottom of the education line-up.

Geter is one of four candidates running for the two open seats on the Barnwell 45 school board this time. The candidates include Dewayne Eubanks, Rhett Richardson and incumbent Chad Perry.

Geter, 43, noticed her home state seemed to always bring up rear of the nation's 50 states in terms of academic performance, she said.

Geter also saw the trend occurring locally, she said.

"What triggered my interest (for the school board) was there were schools in Williston and Blackville that had made AYP but none of the schools in Barnwell made it," she said. "We need to get our schools up to national standards."

Geter was raised in Barnwell by her grandparents, Adell Geter and the late James Geter Jr. She graduated from Barnwell High School in 1985, the only year that the school had three valedictorians at graduation, she said.

Geter then graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C. with a degree in chemical engineering. Geter spent two and a half years in Louisiana working for Shell Oil Co. but "got homesick" and returned to Barnwell where she has been working for Savannah River Site for 17 years, she said.

Geter is now an SRS shift technical engineer. In this role Geter acts as the technical advisor for the different shifts and checks to see government protocols are maintained, she said.

"We have government standards we have to go by," Geter said.

Geter said the biggest challenge the district is facing is raising the standards.

"I'm still big on education standards. I haven't talked to board members on their focus. My main focus is improving the academic achievement of the district," she said. "We had the focus more on the grades the children took home. We should focus on meeting standards in the lower grades and then we won't have to worry about it later on."

This is Geter's first attempt at an elected office. She has been a volunteer through SRS for the United Way Project Care and also for voter registration drives in the past, she said.

Raising graduation rates is another priority the district should address. The high school exit exam seniors take is not a good diagnostic tool for performance because it comes too late, Geter said.

"We need to figure out how to fix it before we get to the end," she said.

Geter would like to see the district promote more "need-based education." There are many top colleges in the country that will help low-income families pay tuition if their students are academically eligible to attend, she said.

"We need to expose our kids to all these opportunities. Those opportunities are out there," Geter said.