EDENTON — Ricky Browder will mark 26 years on the Edenton-Chowan Board of Education this November, and he says he is not ready to leave.

Browder, who represents District 2, is seeking reelection and faces challenger Ollie Inglis in the Nov. 3 general election.

“I believe there’s still work to be done,” Browder said in an interview when asked why he keeps returning to the board.

District 2, which Browder described as the second-largest on the board, begins on the far side of the Pembroke Creek Bridge. It takes in Macedonia, Linhaven, Drummers Point, Yeopim and Cape Colony, along with parts of Cofield and Thicket roads.

Browder, 63, has spent most of his life in town. “I’ve lived in Edenton 53 of my 63 years,” he said.

He has coached football at the high school for about 25 years and said he has been involved in youth athletics “from T-ball right on up.” He also once ran a shaved-ice snowball concession in town, which he sold about 15 years ago.

Browder was senior pastor of a church in Northampton County for 12½ years. He has owned several businesses, including a gutter company he sold about two years ago. He now owns East Coast Garage Door in Edenton, which sells and services garage doors.

Browder’s ties to the school system run through his family — a daughter-in-law who teaches kindergarten at White Oak, another daughter-in-law who helps coach volleyball at the high school, and his oldest son also helps coach football at the high school.”

His father was superintendent of a Christian school in town, which Browder attended. His wife attended the public high school, and his father-in-law coached football there. All three of his children came through local schools.

“I love making a difference in kids’ lives, and that’s why I coach,” Browder said. “That’s why I’m on the school board.”

Browder pointed to the state’s shifting accountability system as a continuing challenge. “The state is constantly giving us moving targets when it comes to testing and accountability,” he said. Just as the district gets a handle on what state officials want, he said, “now they change the formula again, and then it becomes another process all over again.”

He said school grades published a couple of weeks ago show progress. “We have seen great improvement,” he said. “We’re on the right track.” He also said this year’s graduation rate is the highest in three or four years.

Browder credited a district improvement plan developed under Superintendent Tammi Ward. “We challenged our superintendent when she came to put together a plan,” he said. “We’ve got a laser focus on what is needed to make our school system better.”

Asked whether student discipline policy needs changes, Browder said students face pressures that earlier generations did not, including more broken and single-parent homes and “peer pressures from every angle.”

He said technology is part of the problem. “I support the use of technology, but I think we have to find a balance between technology and living a life not glued to a screen,” he said. Overall, he said, “our discipline has shown signs of improvement.”

Browder said he backed the district’s one-to-one initiative, which put laptops or Chromebooks in every student’s hands more than a decade ago. “I was a hundred percent behind it,” he said. With time, he said, “we begin to learn that it may not all be good.”

He said he has spoken with people around the state and believes there is “a consensus that this is something that we need to study.” Students still need to write by hand, he said. “There’s an art to writing.”

Browder said the district’s new high school, now nearly complete, is the product of a long wait. “It’s extremely gratifying to see the process finally come to fruition,” he said.

He recalled sitting with architects in 2007 or 2008, ready to sign an agreement to build, when the board learned the county could not proceed. “That’s very disheartening,” he said.

His youngest son, Austin, was in kindergarten when Browder first talked about a new high school as a board member. He is now 32. “Now, my oldest grandson is a junior, and he’s able to enjoy the new high school,” Browder said. The grandson, Noah Browder, plays football.

Browder supports installing artificial turf. “I’ve been pro turf from the beginning,” he said.

He said turf would let soccer move to the high school campus so all sports are in one place. That would help the athletic trainer, who by law must be with the football team. If a serious head injury happened at the soccer field, he said, “it’s ten minutes before she can get all her stuff and get there, then that’s ten minutes that we lost that could have been a difference made.”

He also cited upkeep. Hydraulic lines blew off the reel mowers three times in a month, he said, and one left a dead patch on the game field. “You have turf, you don’t have to cut that grass, you don’t have to paint the field, you don’t have to fertilize the field,” he said.

Browder acknowledged the idea has critics. “I know it’s not a popular thing,” he said. “I’m in favor of it, but we are not the ones that hold the purse strings.”

The board can influence teacher pay through stipends, Browder said, but “we have to depend on the county to raise our county allotment in order to be able to raise the stipends.” Increases over the last three or four years have helped. “That’s a plus, but it’s not where we want to be,” he said.

The board’s goal is the highest stipend in the northeast region, he said, and he named Currituck County as the likely comparison. He said stipends, including those for coaches, are “a morale thing.”

“Edenton has always been a community that was not necessarily a status quo community,” he said. “There’s not another high school in this area that’s even close.”

On the board’s relationship with the Chowan County commissioners, Browder said, “It’s encouraging to know that we are at least trending in the direction that we need to be.”

As to LifeWise Academy’s released-time religious instruction program, Browder said, “There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what the Board of Education’s role is. We are a policy-making board.”

In recent months, the board adopted a district policy to govern outside groups offering classes, he said, and finalized it this month with technical corrections after review by its attorneys. The superintendent vets each group and reports back to the board. Browder said the board does not take an up-or-down vote on such groups.

“I did not vote in favor of LifeWise, and I did not vote against LifeWise because that’s not what my job was,” he said.

He said curriculum is the group’s responsibility, not the board’s. “I’m all about giving the parents the opportunity to choose what they think is best for their kids,” he said. His concern is safety. “Is there proper security? Is there proper transportation? Is there proper vetting of those people that will be teaching those individuals?” he said.

Asked about his biggest accomplishment, Browder said the new high school alone does not qualify. “It’s hard to break it down to just one thing,” he said, pointing to staff and student achievement.

He said he wants to be remembered as “a non-partisan school board member that was not affected by party in any way.”

“I want them to say that he was always fair,” Browder said. “He always listened, and to the best of his ability, he came to the best possible decision that would benefit all stakeholders involved.”