Now with her first full school year under her belt—she was sworn in January 2015—Jolene has made good on many of her promises to bring taxpayer and parent-friendly reform to the local public schools. The long saga of the school bus system—in which the local daily paper with little success tried to portray Byrne as an airhead—has ended with the subsuming of the bus service within the local school system itself. For the first time in generations, Savannah-Chatham will be running its own buses.

Runner-up: Julie M. Wade