Barreiro
Jose “Joe” Barreiro credits Cherokee County for rescuing him during a dark time in his childhood. He wants to give back as one of the two District 3 representatives on the Cherokee County Board of Education.
Barreiro grew up in Florida, but spent every summer of his childhood in Cherokee County visiting his grandparents. He came to live with them and attend Hiwassee Dam High School in the mid-1990s, about a year after his mother passed away from breast cancer when he was 13.
He moved back to the area in 2019, bringing a diverse professional background that includes 21 years in the U.S. Army, mixed martial arts and work as a fitness and cover model.
“I came back to this area because I wanted to get back to the place that saved my life,” Barreiro said. “The bottom line is the people here opened up to me. I did get messed with because I was an outsider but ... by the time I left here, I felt like I was a local.”
Barreiro said he has witnessed the decline of career opportunities in the area over the years. He believes the county and school system need a greater focus on creating opportunities for graduates of Cherokee County to remain in the area working worthwhile careers.
“The only way to fix it is to bring something to this area for the kids to do,” Barreiro said. “The best way to do that is to start educating them so they can stick around, and they can start being the future entrepreneurs and future business owners, the future of innovation in this area.”
To that end, Barreiro would prefer not to see students separated into smaller groupings, such as Tri-County Early College and The Oaks Academy alternative school. Those schools are part of the new School of Innovation & Technology being built in Peachtree, but Barreiro believes that facility should strictly be a vocational school where kids can learn trades.
“My push is going to be to get rid of the Early College,” Barreiro said. “Push those intelligent kids back out into the rest of the populous, where the other kids get to learn and grow from them.
“When you take all the smartest kids out of the school and you plug them into one school, you just created this society-clique that we’re claiming we’re trying to get rid of – upper-lower-middle class.”
Barreiro and his wife, who works with Hiwassee Dam schools, have four daughters. Two graduated from Cherokee County Schools last year – one from Hiwassee Dam High School, another from Murphy High School – while the youngest two are still in the school system.
Barreiro said while high school consolidation remains a central topic among voters and many candidates, the school board has already voted, and the issue is in the hands of the commissioners and the state. Instead, he is focused on issues within the rest of the school system, including the fact that Hiwassee Dam Elementary/Middle School is teetering on the brink of a shutdown due to lack of students.
“There’s probably not a single person that wouldn’t love to keep the current schools open, but the reality is that within one year, Hiwassee Dam Elementary and Middle School is going to be closed,” Barreiro said. “That might happen this summer.
“Right now, they’ve got 104 students pre-registered for next year. If they lose four kids, the state comes in and shuts the school down.”
Special needs children are another important focus.
“We have over 500 kids in this district, in this county who have special needs,” Barreiro said. “That is an abnormally high (number) for any place, and a lot of it has to do with parents being on drugs while they were pregnant.”