In this Issue of Hey Cherokee County…

✅ School Board Chair Steve Coleman Says Cherokee County Has Kicked the Can Long Enough

✅ Tri-County Early College Earns National Beta School of Distinction

Cherokee County Events

August 4th

August 11th

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August 22nd

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September 16th-19th

September 26th

October 31st

November 21st

Publisher’s Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series based on an interview with Steve Coleman, Chairman of the Cherokee County Board of Education.

Steve Coleman had signed a lot of paperwork as Cherokee County Board of Education Chairman — most of it without a second thought. But earlier this year, when he was given diplomas to sign for the first time, he paused, realizing his name would now appear in the corner of every diploma handed to every graduate in the county. 

He sat down, looked at a diploma, and did something unexpected: he practiced his handwriting.

"I'm not a doctor, however I write like a doctor — you can't read it," Coleman said with a laugh. "And I was like, man, I need to make this where you can read it."

That moment meant something to him that it might not have meant to someone else. Coleman is the kind of person who will tell you without blinking that he was not sure he was going to graduate high school — that if he hadn't been a good enough athlete, he might not have. The man who now signs diplomas knows exactly what it feels like to wonder whether one is coming.

That contrast — where he started, where he ended up, and how much he learned in between — is the backbone of why Coleman, a four-year school board veteran and current board chair, is now running for Cherokee County Commissioner.

Coleman's path to the school board wasn't complicated. He has eight children — one still in the Cherokee County Schools system and two still in Macon County — and a wife who teaches at Nantahala School. He had coached youth and school sports for years. He saw problems. He saw, in his words, "a lack of people just doing what needs to be done — without an agenda — just cause to fix all of it."

So he ran for office.

"I'm not big on my thumbs doing the talking on Facebook and all these social media things," he said. "You can have an opinion about things, you can have an idea about things, but you either jump in the pot and try to fix them or you keep your mouth shut."

What he found when he got there, though, wasn't what he expected.

"You get into something and then you realize it's nothing like you thought it was gonna be," he said. "I thought I would be able to do this and this and this — and you can't."

The biggest eye-opener? Money — or more precisely, who controls it. The Cherokee County Board of Education, Coleman learned, can spend up to roughly $50,000 on its own. Anything beyond that requires approval from the county commissioners, who hold "the purse to everything in the county," he said.

"You do all this work to then have to be approved by another group of people who have not done that much work — cause they physically can't," Coleman said. "They have all these entities to take care of. The school is just one of them. Well, guess what — that's my only one right now."

He described a recurring frustration: the school board identifies a need, does the research, brings a solution — and then waits on a body that may not share the same day-to-day familiarity with the situation.

"There's been situations where we need something — and it may be we need to order it now to get it a year from now to make sure school opens a year and a half from now," Coleman said. "And they may not see that because they're not in it every day. But then you go to ask for it, and because they don't think that it's the right timing — they can just say no."

He's had "pretty hot and heated discussions" at the courthouse as a result. Coleman said one previous commissioner told him plainly that the school board was "just a formality."

"I don't deal well with that," Coleman said. "If I'm given a job, I'm gonna do that job."

That friction is what ultimately pushed him toward this next step.

"I wanna be that guy that gives the approval now," he said, "because I know how much work we've put in the last four years and it just kind of dies when it gets there."

His central argument — the one he keeps coming back to — is this: fix the school system and you fix the county.

"If you wanna fix the county, you fix the school system," Coleman said. "People go on Zillow — if you're a family with a kid or you're a family that's gonna have a kid, one of the most hit buttons is school system. Right now, that's not a very good button to hit for us."

He's not talking about turning Cherokee County into Gatlinburg. He's talking about making it a place where families want to come, where students who grow up here actually want to stay, and where the school system is a draw — not a liability.

"I'm not a highly educated person — school wise," he said. "But world wise, I got that."

In the next issue: Coleman lays out his school consolidation plan — what it is, and why he says it won't add a single dollar to your tax bill.

Paid for by Steve Coleman, candidate for the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners District 3 seat. Hey Cherokee County accepts paid political advertising. Candidates and campaigns may contact us for rates and availability.

Tri-County Early College has been recognized as a 2025–2026 National Beta School of Distinction, an honor given to schools with strong National Beta programs that promote academic achievement, leadership, character, and service.

According to National Beta, 2,959 clubs nationwide earned the designation this year.

As part of the recognition, the school will receive a National Beta School of Distinction banner to display on campus.

National Beta is a nonprofit student organization that serves more than 500,000 members through approximately 14,000 clubs in the United States and abroad. The organization encourages academic success, leadership, service, and character development for students in grades 4–12.

Click the image below to read Tri-County Early College's full announcement and original comments.

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