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Editorial: School boards and purpose
Op-Ed · September 03, 2015


If you could not attend Monday’s School Board candidate forum, hosted by the Parent Teacher Organization and West Branch Times, you missed a lot of good information.


Candidates Jodi Yeggy, Keith Schultes, Julie Sexton and Alexis Johnson each clearly explained their positions and beliefs, including honestly saying when they didn’t know a specific answer.

The PTO laid out excellent questions to help us better understand the candidates.

Here are some of the things we found most interesting while listening:

• Answering a question about why he wanted to serve on West Branch Board of Education, Schultes, talking about his own children, said “I love that they come home and talk about great things.” That is a good observation for parents to make when judging the quality of the school.

• On the subject of making difficult financial decisions, Sexton said that if you have to make an unpopular decision, you should revisit that decision in the future because “things change.” The idea being that once difficult circumstances have lessened, or ended, then it is time to reduce the impact of a plan that has run its necessary course. We want schools to always practice fiscally conservative budgeting, but not at the expense of a challenging curriculum and quality staff support.

• Also answering the question about finances, Yeggy said a school board member needs to support and have faith in school administrators, but that school board members must ask a lot of questions so they fully understand an issue. This is very important. School board members must not put blind faith in administrators or school board members serve no useful purpose. Questions are asked to understand, not simply to oppose. There is a difference.

• Answering a question about how they can be an effective board member, Johnson said, “I’m the new kid,” referring both to her short time in the community — a bit more than four years — and the fact that while she knows many children through church, she doesn’t yet have any children enrolled in the school district. We want diversity in the board. We would like a mix of personal backgrounds and experiences. We want more-experienced people who know why things are done a certain way, and we want less-experienced people who can better think “out of the box.” The conversation that comes prior to a decision is most valuable when it starts with a wide range of options.

A couple of the candidates talked about experiences visiting another town where conversation revealed they are from West Branch, and someone interjects, “West Branch? That’s a good school.”

It’s excellent to know the school district has a strong reputation. It draws new families here and can indirectly benefit the economy. Yet that is peripheral to the school’s purpose.

Schools exist not to churn out students with high ACT scores nor meet No Child Left Behind minimums. Schools exist first and foremost to prepare students for life after graduation, whether that means college or military or careers, and that means not just smarts and skills, but dependability and honesty.

We want people to believe that if a child comes out of West Branch schools that they can say, “I can count on them” — no matter what they are asked to do.

We encourage voters to keep that in mind when casting their ballot for school board candidates.