Moss wins literacy gamble, reelected Chatham school board president

Entering this election season, Savannah-Chatham County School Board President Roger Moss, gambled that putting his efforts to improve the school system’s poor literacy rates at the center of his reelection campaign would pay off.

He acknowledged during the campaign that there had been only a modest improvement in literacy scores during his four years as board chairman but argued that he had helped put enough pieces in place — including a new superintendent — to merit another term in office.

County voters apparently agreed. Moss won 51.7% of the vote to 48.9% of the 52,614 votes cast in Tuesday’s nonpartisan election, to 48.9% for his challenger, Dr. Dionne Hoskins-Brown, according to unofficial results.

The victory means a second, four-year term as board president for Moss, who was first catapulted to the post in 2022 by a coalition of downtown business leaders and conservative grassroots Republican groups who were captivated by his accomplishments as founder the Savannah Children’s Choir and a cofounder of Savannah Classical Academy, a charter school.

The same coalition backed him this time around, boosted by endorsements from prominent local Democrats, including state Sen. Derek Mallow and Savannah City Council members Linda Wilder Bryan and Nick Palumbo.

Hoskins-Brown, a marine biologist who gave up the school board seat she had held for 14 years to take on Moss, did not part ways with Moss over efforts to tackle the problem of literacy in Chatham’s public schools. Indeed, she largely embraced those efforts. Instead, she bet that she could parlay her deep ties in predominantly Black, Democratic strongholds in Chatham into victory. She fell short.

In the campaign’s final weeks, Hoskins-Brown faced a well-orchestrated social media campaign by independent committees supporting Moss. The campaign sought to single her out for the problems that have faced the school system, including literacy, absenteeism and administrative costs that conservative critics have deemed exorbitant.

At times, the messaging went beyond simple negative campaigning, using photos of Hoskins-Brown that had been doctored to make her appear not merely frightening, but ghoulish and demonic.

This article appears in 2026 Elections: Candidate lists, news.