Kim Rutland soundly defeated incumbent Liz Carson Keith in Tuesday’s election for the District 3 Board of Education seat.

Rutland won 62.85 percent of the votes, with a total of 445 over Keith’s 263 votes (37.15 percent).

Rutland currently serves as director of student affairs at Moultrie Technical College’s Tifton Campus and has 13 years of experience in the field of education.

She feels the that the three most difficult issues in the public school system right now are graduation rates, funding and recruiting and retaining qualified teachers and that her experience has made her able to face those.

“Through my experience in education and having my children in the school system right now I am able to see the challenges that the school system is going through. I get to see the big picture,” she said.

She said of the results, “I’m excited, humbled and overwhelmed. I’ve just had so much support from family and friends and I just can’t thank them enough.”

This will be Rutland’s first time on the board and she says she feels she has a lot to learn and she’s excited to get started.

“There are a lot of inside issues that you have to learn about and I just want to submerge myself into it. I want to do the best job that I can for the students, teachers and the taxpayers,” she said.

Keith had earlier announced that she would not seek re-election to the at-large post (District 7) she previously served due to health reasons, but later decide to run for the District 3 seat after Erick Willis announced that he was vacating his post for “professional reasons.”

She said she did not do a lot of campaigning because of a lack of funding, but she hoped that she could overcome that through hard work.

“I did a lot of door-to-door campaigning. I think that was a good thing — win or lose — because I got to talk to a lot of people and find out how they felt about things.”

Of the results she said, “I thought she [Rutland] ran an outstanding campaign. It was clean, well run and I wish her the best of luck.”

Carson Keith said she appreciated the time she’d spent on the board and she was proud of what she’d accomplished. She felt sure that Rutland was up to the task of continuing with that.

Carson Keith says she still has a lot on her plate. “I’ve got lots of things to do that I haven’t had time for and I think I’ll work on those,” she said.