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Former Watauga school board member appointed to fill vacancy

88.5 WFDD - Public Radio For The Piedmont | By Amy Diaz
Published May 12, 2026 at 3:22 PM EDT
Marshall Ashcraft speaks at the podium during a Watauga County school board meeting Monday night.
Courtesy Watauga County Schools
Marshall Ashcraft speaks at the podium during a Watauga County school board meeting Monday night.

The Watauga County Board of Education has unanimously appointed a former member to fill a vacant seat.

Marshall Ashcraft will be taking over for Charlotte Mizelle Lloyd, who recently stepped down due to a family health matter.

Ashcraft served on the board from 2020 to 2024. He wasn’t re-elected, but it was a close race. He lost by about 150 votes.

At a meeting this week, Watauga County school board members chose him from a pool of 20 candidates.

Board Chair Gary Childers said Ashcraft’s previous experience in the role and as a district employee made him a strong choice.

District officials say he will be officially sworn in in the coming weeks. He will fulfill the term ending with the next board of education election in 2028.
Amy Diaz
Amy Diaz began covering education in North Carolina’s Piedmont region and High Country for WFDD in partnership with Report For America in 2022. Before entering the world of public radio, she worked as a local government reporter in Flint, Mich. where she was named the 2021 Rookie Writer of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. Diaz is originally from Florida, where she interned at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelanced for the Tampa Bay Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, but truly got her start in the field in elementary school writing scripts for the morning news. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.
See stories by Amy Diaz