Informed Voter Coalition: SPS Board of Education

Springfield Public Schools Board of Education candidates Kelly Byrne, Sarah Hough, David Myers and Gail Smart are interviewed.

Springfield Business Journal this year is part of the nonpartisan Informed Voter Coalition, a 13-member nonpartisan group with the goal of educating voters and engaging candidates with citizens.

Four candidates – an incumbent and three newcomers – are vying for two seats on the Springfield Public Schools Board of Education in the April 8 election.

The incumbent, Kelly Byrne, is hoping for a second term of office, while the other candidates – Sarah Hough, David Myers and Gail Smart – are vying for the seat being vacated after a single term by Steve Makoski.

The following is an excerpt from interviews conducted by the Informed Voter Coalition, of which Springfield Business Journal is one of 13 member organizations.

The candidates’ responses are presented in the order they were interviewed.

What is the role of public schools to shape our future citizens and prepare graduating students for work or continued education?

Sarah Hough: I truly believe that public schools are the bedrock of a thriving community. It really is our way to prepare children for success, and I think the public schools are so unique in that we’re touching every child in a community, right? We’re giving every child access to opportunity, access to education, access to better themselves and access to be contributing members to our community, so I believe supporting our public schools is so important.

When I think about what I want to see from our public schools, it is certainly a focus on academic achievement. We need to make sure that our kids are getting the skills and the academic preparation that they need to succeed. The workforce is changing. The world is changing. The way we get information is changing, so how do we make sure that our students are curious, they’re lifelong learners, they have the foundation for success in reading and math and those skills that are going to take them into the future?

As a community, and leaders on the board of education, I think we have a responsibility to make sure our schools are serving students in that way, and I think that means partnering with the business community and the broader community at large to understand what the future of work looks like, to understand where are the opportunities for our students and making sure that we’re building our school district in that direction.

Gail Smart: When students graduate from Springfield Public Schools, they need to be ready to enter either college or the workforce or a certificate program or a vocational school – something like that – so it is the responsibility of the public schools of course to have them ready to go. This includes providing a love of learning. It also includes continuing to improve academics and providing college and career pathways for students.

I think that collaborations and partnerships with the business community is important, and it gives students insights and skills into real-world educational opportunities. A couple of the things that we have in the Springfield Public Schools are GO CAPS. That is a renowned, nationally known program, and this is an example of how businesses and communities and schools can all work together to educate our students to be future employees, and GO CAPS focuses on entrepreneurship and manufacturing; it provides real-world projects, real work projects, job shadowing and internships, and our newest partnership is the health care alliance with Springfield Public Schools, Ozarks Tech, Cox Hospital and MSU. And this gives students a head start into the health care, and it really addresses a need that we have and our health care workforce shortage. So, I think that it’s important to have board members who support these business partnerships.

Kelly Byrne: Our role is simply put in the mission of the district. In my first term on the board, I was fortunate to take part in revising the district’s strategic plan, and as part of that there is a mission that’s clearly stated that is essentially SPS, its purpose, is to create high-quality academic opportunities for each student. So, everything that I do in my board service kind of is viewed through the lens of that, and that’s what we need to do. I mean, for public education, we need to be providing each of our 24,000 students high-quality opportunities so that they can find their avenue and create this sort of baseline foundational education so that once they leave, once they graduate, hopefully, they go out in the world and can make their own path and maybe specialize from there, but have those sort of baseline things that they need to be able to function in society and then take on sort of a more specialized approach beyond that.

So, all the decisions that we make at the board level really comes down to how can we provide opportunity for each student, how can we provide those high-quality academic opportunities, and what that should all translate to is academic success, and that really is the mission. There’s a lot of things that we do, there’s a lot of decisions that we make, but all of it has to ultimately come down to what’s going to be the best for each student to be able to achieve academic success.

David Myers: Well, education – I mean, you know that’s the big word. We need to be able to clearly and confidently educate our students. They’re not just a product; this is not a commodity. These are future adults. They’re our kids. They’re our grandkids. They’re future business owners, future community leaders, and we need to give them the best opportunity that they have to get out there and really shine and excel. And I want Springfield Public Schools – this is a great microcosm of so much in this small city. A little over 250,000 people reside here, and yet at the same time, we run the gamut of industry and socioeconomic status, and we really need to give our students the best chance that they’ve got at an education.

I really want to give them as much of a fighting chance as we can. I think that we need, too, to be focusing on giving them qualities, not just in core competencies, but also how to be good adults, how to be good functioning adults in society. I think that we need to be showing them the wide breadth of opportunities and careers that they have, not just in the state or the nation, but even here in Springfield there’s a lot of opportunities for students that they don’t know about. And so, I think it’s just opening doors and valuing our students and really empowering teachers that gets us to where we want to be.

How would you work to attract and maintain quality teachers and support professionals in the school district?

Hough: That is a really great question, and I think it’s one that has been on the mind of almost any interview that I’ve done, has talked about recruiting and retaining teachers. Fundamentally, there are some key things that we have to make sure we get right as a school district. We have to pay our teachers well, and I love that in SPS’ strategic plan, one of the first goals is paying teachers the highest rate in southwest Missouri, certainly, but I think there’s even a goal to be the highest-paying district in the state. That has to be a focus. Compensation isn’t everything within our role, but that certainly has to be a focus, and you know we all work because we get paid and that funds our life – certainly that’s not the only reason teachers are doing the work that they’re doing, but it certainly has to be a part of the package to recruit and retain teachers.

I also think, you know, fundamentally we just have to build a culture of respect and celebrate the achievements of our school district and our teachers. When you look at the thing that impacts students more than anything, their educational attainment is impacted more by the quality of their teachers than it is by the curriculum, than it is by the facilities, than it is by administration, so we know that that is the key factor in academic achievement for our kids, so we have to build that culture of celebrating the wins of our teachers.

You know, I think the other thing that I would talk about in this piece is we have to make sure that our kids and our teachers have safe spaces to learn, so that certainly includes the physical safety of the buildings, but providing the behavioral supports to make sure that they have the attention of the kids in the classroom – to make sure that those behavior issues that have increased, unfortunately, since COVID are being addressed and being addressed in a meaningful way so our teachers can focus on what they’re passionate about, which is teaching our kids.

Smart: I think that teacher retention of course is one of the issues, one of the challenges, that the Springfield Public Schools is facing. Hiring and retaining high-quality teachers is the No. 1 factor in student success. About a month ago, I had teachers at my home to ask them about what is working and what is not working, and one of the things, the first thing they told me, was teachers are working, counselors are working, bus drivers are working – everybody in the building is working to make sure that the students have the best day that they can have, the best education they can have, and we need to make sure that our teachers are valued and supported. They have to navigate so many things, frequently changing testing systems and accountability systems, stressful working conditions, so anything that we can do as a board to create and support a culture where teachers are rewarded is what I pledge to do, and what I would support on the board. And it’s not just listening to teachers, but it’s actually responding to them – and responding to them in a prompt way.

Byrne: We do this through the board, and it’s absolutely fundamental. The teachers are the ones that are working with the students every day, and it’s the ones closest to the students that have the biggest impact on the students’ lives. Ultimately, the household structure and their support of education and reinforcement in the home is going to be really the greatest indicator for success for students. But when it comes to the district and what we can control, it comes down to teachers. You need to hire and retain the highest, most qualified staff. So in my term, I have supported every teacher raise that we’ve been able to offer, which has been each of the three years that I’ve served.

And the biggest thing that I’m hearing from teachers that I know to be true in my three years on the board is the teachers need help when it comes to managing student behaviors. This is a great problem in the district, and it’s not unique to this district. It’s a problem across many districts, but it’s one that I don’t think we are fully tackling to give the teachers what they need. In the last four years – we have approximately 700 K-5 teachers, elementary teachers, and in the last four years, 400 of them have left, have turned over – we’ve had to turn over those positions – and these are a lot of our most tenured teachers, the ones that have been doing it their whole lives and really know what they’re doing. This just isn’t sustainable, and the biggest reason for this that I’m hearing and I think was clear in the climate and culture survey that we did that people might not be very aware of because it’s not something that the district chose to kind of put out in the forefront, but out of the top 50 issues that were raised by the teachers themselves, behavior was 40 of them or so. So, I know this to be true. I also believe that is why I have the endorsement of both the SNEA and the MSTA.

Myers: I am a bridge builder. Like I said, I’ve 16 years in the U.S. Army. I’ve learned a lot about talking to people, a lot about communicating. I mean, the military is the most diverse organization in the country – you know, probably the world – and we have to show that we care. That sounds a little cliched. What I mean is, when you’ve got teachers that are concerned about being heard, when you’ve got teachers that are concerned about discipline in their classrooms, but you don’t have a board or administration that wants to actually set policy, then it doesn’t really show the teachers that they’re serious about it.

We can talk all day long about different discussion topics, but until we’re willing to say, you know what, cell phones don’t need to be a part of the classroom experience, and we’re going to write a policy to that end – then teachers don’t really have anything to fall back on, and that’s the thing that I’m hearing from them as I talk to them, is that they’re concerned that they just don’t feel empowered; they don’t feel like they’ve got the backing of the administration. And there’s a myriad of other issues. I mean, we’ve got the annualized pay issue that the school board just talked about recently, which incidentally I’m in favor of. I think we ought to have annualized pay. I think we need to show teachers that we care by showing them that we have their best interests in mind. And it’s not just in the classroom, but it’s also in their interpersonal lives. Like, you can confidently say, yeah, I’m going to be here for a 12-month lease because I’ve got an annualized pay structure. That kind of thing I think show’s teachers a lot.

What do you view as the greatest challenges facing the Springfield Public School District? Which of these would be your priority objective, and how would you meet that challenge?

Hough: There are going to be a few challenges that we face in the coming years. One is certainly going to be some tough decisions around our budget. And you know, I think that as a board member, one, what we can do – and as a community – we can advocate for funding for our public schools. I think that’s very important for us to understand public school funding and the proposed budget – the impact of vouchers and sone of the proposed legislation at the state level. I think as a community, we have to be advocating for full funding of our public schools. So I think the budget’s going to be number one, but I think as a board member when I’m looking at those decisions, we’re going to have to make some tough budget decisions in the coming years, and as a board member I think we need to prioritize maintaining positions that impact our students directly, so our classroom teachers, our behavioral interventionists, our support staff that are working with kids every day, those positions have to be maintained. We have to make sure that we’re thinking about the integrity of the classroom experience when we face those budget decisions that we know are coming as a result of COVID funding expiring. You know, I think another key challenge is going to be recruiting and retaining teachers. We talked about that a little bit in our questions, and I think we have to continue to focus on that, because we know that quality teachers impact education in such a meaningful way, so we’re going to have to continue to focus on that, and I’m proud of the school district. We’ve made a lot of gains in the last couple of years in terms of academic achievement, but I think we have to continue focusing on academic achievement for our kids, making sure that they’re getting an education that’s going to prepare them for their future. And I think we have to be laser focused on that, and make sure that our kids are getting the education that they need to go on to success whatever that looks like for them, whether it’s trade school or higher education, into the workforce right after graduation, we have to make sure that they’re succeeding.

Smart: As I said before, I think that teacher retention is a big challenge for our school district, and I do believe that, as I said before, teachers need to be listened to and responded to. I do believe that we need to engage in supporting teacher professional development. We need to make sure that they are able to attend various learning opportunities and workshops and conferences. I think that one thing that would help in teacher retention is strengthening the mentorship program. Strong mentors provide feedback and coaching skills, and I think this shows that we value new teachers and are committed to passing the torch. I would champion these policies that reflect support. I also know that discipline is an issue, and I think that there’s an urgency to that – that is one thing I hear also from parents and teachers as well. I think that we need to make that a higher priority for the administration, and I think we need to give teachers and principals more tools and options to handle the students, with handling behavior, and maybe we need to reallocate resources to have more paras in the classroom. I looked it up today, and there are over 30 paraprofessional positions open in the school system. I think the teachers, they can’t be the counselor and social worker or the nurse.

Byrne: We have a few challenges facing us right now, and I’ve already touched on a few of these, but the primary one that’s standing in our way of making drastic improvements to academic success is the behavior issues that we experience and really getting a handle on those. It’s driving teachers away; it’s making it hard for us to keep good, qualified teachers, and those teachers working with the students every day are what’s most important for us to be successful. In addition to that, we’re at an interesting time where we’re in the middle of four straight years of budget reduction. We just simply have less revenue coming in than we did in the past because it’s all tied to attendance, and we have essentially about 1,500 less students than we had in 2019. So now we’re having to receive our funding from the state on a per-student basis on those numbers, compared to the prior numbers, so we have to sort of right-size the district to the revenue. We spent the last two years making some cuts, and all of these cuts have been really intended to impact the least on the classroom. Certainly, from my point of view, the worst thing we could do is affect the teacher-to-student ratios. I think this circles back to why I think it’s important that I be elected again for this school board at this time, is we don’t have other board members who have a background in business and understanding revenue and expenditures and making those really tough decisions to ensure the health of the organization. We have teachers or educators on the board; we have a retired physician; we have an attorney. But we really need that sort of business experience that understands finance and HR and management and making those sort of tough decisions, and of the other candidates running, no one has the experience that I have in this area, either.

Myers: I think one of the biggest issues right now is of course the budget. And they’re cutting $7.5 million because of COVID funds and various other things. We’ve already cut $7.5 million. We have got to get our budget in check. I mean, it is a beast, that’s for sure, but again with my experience owning my own business since 2016, managing personal financial budgets of disabled veterans, I’ve got that experience going in. I’m able to go line by line, see where things can be cut, see where things can be tweaked, see where things can be saved. I’m not always about cutting. I definitely don’t bring an ax to a scalpel session. We need to take a fine-toothed comb and go through this budget. We need to take a scalpel and cut. We don’t need to be chopping things, because what that does is it tends to cause chaos; it tends to cause confusion. And again, we’ve got teachers that are concerned about being heard and being supported; then we definitely need to be showing strength and consistency. I also think that discipline in the classrooms is a big issue. You hear a lot of teachers talking about that regularly. I know that the board has been loath to actually write a policy dealing with cell phones, but I will tell you the teachers that I talk to and the parents, they are saying clearly, cell phones are a problem. We have got to step up and just be the adults in the room and say, look, this is what we need to do, period. There’s a lot of different ways to address that issue, too. It’s not just banning all cell phones, which I think is actually what the legislature is working on right now. We want local control of this situation. We don’t need the legislature doing this for us. So, I think that cell phones need to be dealt with, too, for discipline purposes.