In a unanimous vote, Sumter school board chose accomplished hometown product Gerald Gary as its new district superintendent on Monday night, pending successful contract negotiations.

A Sumter native, Gary is currently chief operations officer of Irmo-based Lexington-Richland School District Five, a cabinet-level post that he has held for about a year. The district's official enrollment last school year was 16,521 and is larger than Sumter School District's total of 13,224 students.

In his role, Gary oversees facilities, transportation, technology and student nutrition services for the district's 27 schools. The position is his first at the district office level in his career, but Gary has been recognized statewide as a principal.

In 2017, at Dutch Fork Middle School in Lexington-Richland 5, he was named the state's middle school principal of the year by the South Carolina Association of School Administrators. Four years later in 2021, after Gary had moved to Dutch Fork High School, the association named him the state high school principal of the year.

No Sumter superintendent since consolidation in 2011 - when two local districts merged into one county-wide district - had achieved that level of statewide recognition in their careers before coming to Sumter.

During Gary's tenure at those two Irmo-based schools, both were also named by the S.C. Association of School Administrators as Palmetto's Finest Award winners, one of the most coveted and respected school awards in the state.

Gary has served in Lexington-Richland 5, one of the higher-performing districts in South Carolina, for 15 years. A total of 14 years were as a school principal before moving to the COO position at the district office in March 2025.

Gary graduated from Sumter High School in 1994 and still attends St. Luke A.M.E. Church on St. Pauls Church Road, even though he lives in Elgin.

He has served 28 years in K-12 public education to include 20 as a principal, four as a classroom teacher, three as an assistant principal and one in his current cabinet-level post.

Gary will be Sumter School District's fifth full-time superintendent in 15 years as a county-wide district and sixth if an interim superintendent who served two years is included in the mix.

Since the consolidation in 2011, the district's school board has for the most part struggled with city versus county battles, and the current board is no different.

However, Gary said last week in his interview with The Sumter Item that he looks forward to returning to his roots in Sumter, where he grew up and went to school.

"The teachers in this district and the people in this county poured so much into me," he said, "and I want to give back, and I want to be a part of the great job they are doing educating students. So many teachers, administrators and coaches were impactful in my life.

"And in student government, they told us to become leaders and come back and be leaders, and I want to come back and be a leader in the very system that poured so much into me. I am who I am in large part because of Sumter County School District and Sumter County."

The board made the announcement at 9:55 p.m. Monday after returning from executive session behind closed doors.

The trustees chose Gary over two other finalists, Cassandra Barker of Lancaster Independent School District in Lancaster, Texas, and MiUndrae Prince of Richland School District One, based in Columbia. None of the finalists has experience as a superintendent previously.