Six vying for three JCPS board seats

The News Tribune asked two questions of six candidates running for three available Jefferson City Public Schools Board of Education seats in the April 4 election: Why are you running, and what are the three biggest issues you will face if you win?

The seventh registered candidate, Joshua Harmon, did not provide responses.

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Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead costumes. Models: Kyle Corimer and Larnie Hughes

Why are you running?

Lori Massman was born and raised in Jefferson City and said she can remember how great the public schools used to be. "Not that it's bad (now), but I remember how it used to be. And I have a lot of pride in being a Jefferson City alumna."

She wants to be an advocate to the administration for students, teachers and parents. She also wants to emulate practices of current JCPS Superintendent Larry Linthacum - visit schools and interact with the community and kids in person, have an open-door policy, and be open to taking calls from people with questions.

Massman is community development manager at Scholastic, where she has worked for 31 years. She and her husband have four children, three of whom are JCPS graduates; her fourth child is a freshman at Simonsen 9th Grade Center.

Steve Bruce is the incumbent vice president of the school board, and he said he's "not satisfied with where we are as a school district," adding "the work is not finished."

He wants to help build a culture in the district wherein teachers "feel valued and empowered." He also wants to "repair and improve the relationship between our schools and community."

Bruce works for the state as part of a team of senior managers and analysts in fiscal management and administrative services. His wife is a veteran third-grade teacher in the district, and they have two daughters who attend school in the district.

Scott Hovis said the school district is like family to him, given he and his sister graduated from Jefferson City High School, and both of their parents worked for JCPS when they were growing up.

He wants to get the district back to its old glory, citing its "pride through excellence" motto. "We have the foundation to get back to the top" with great administrators, superintendent and teachers, he said.

Hovis is the executive director of the Missouri Golf Association, a position he's held since 2005. He and his wife have a first-grade son and seventh-grade daughter in the district.

The main reason J. Don Salcedo is running is to "build trust and confidence" between the district and community. "It's perceived the school board does things in secret," he said of community feelings.

Salcedo has worked in Central Missouri for 17 years and has been a Jefferson City resident for five years. He is a retired teacher and was a UniServ director for the Columbia chapter of the Missouri branch of the National Education Association teachers' union.

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Paul Graham has his own law office and also works with Call & Gentry Law Group LLC. He calls himself a "street lawyer," dealing in areas of law such as divorce, disability and mental health issues, and he's used to dealing with the accompanying bureaucracies.

"I think I've got the time to do this right," he said. And it's the right moment, he said, of his decision to run for a position on the school board. He has three grown daughters who graduated from the JCPS system. He also comes from a family of teachers and taught English himself for 13 years in university-level settings.

Victoria Sterling said she and her fiance are "really excited about putting down roots here." She said, though, when they started asking around about local public schools for the child they plan to adopt soon, they were told it would be better to send their child to a private school.

She discovered in conversations a lack of trust between the community and district that needs to be resolved, and she said the best way to address those issues is to get involved as a leader.

Sterling works as an abuse and neglect investigator for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and previously worked in higher education for five years.

 

What are the three biggest issues you will face if you win?

Salcedo wants to address trust and confidence issues between the school board and community by televising board meetings. He said not putting them on local access TV solidifies the perception the board acts secretively.

He wants to examine fiscal responsibility on the part of administration and the school board. "There could be a better accounting," especially of people authorized by the district to have credit cards, he said.

The third big issue for Salcedo is meeting the educational needs of the district, whether the ballot issues in April pass or fail. He explained the district at that point will have to go and convince the community to keep making investments - "by our actions, not our words." He will support the decisions the board makes that show good stewardship, but he doesn't want to rubber-stamp recommendations. He said he knows there's "no quick fix or anything easy about it" when it comes to the community outreach the board will have to do.

Graham wants to re-evaluate grievance policies and procedures for teachers - not just conduct one more study of them. He said he would propose the board ask teachers in the district to immediately re-write the procedures and present them to the board. He also said grievance procedures have become a barrier, creating an expectation of an adversarial relationship between teachers and administration.

He wants a "serious" audit of district oversight procedures and not just its books - "to see if things can't be done better." He wants to cut down on the size of administration, too. He expects an audit would recommend elimination of the in-house counsel.

It's the existence of the position itself he objects to, not its current occupant. He worries about the money tied-up in maintaining the position permanently and even more so the effect it may have on morale if teachers don't feel like they're being backed and instead are armed against with procedures.

He would like to see more attention paid to in-classroom aid resources for teachers in order to improve the student-to-teacher ratio in the district and help teachers more effectively work with students with special needs or other issues that slow them down. He does not know the current condition of resource programs for teachers but wants to evaluate them to determine their status either way.

Massman wants to achieve smaller class sizes in the district. She said building a second high school would be a good way to start, and after that, she would support looking at middle and elementary schools. If voters do not approve funding for a second high school in April, "we'd have to work with administration and figure it out," within whatever the district's budget would allow.

She wants to explore community partnerships with the district to address student behavioral issues. She cited organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Boys & Girls Club and a partnership between Pathways and the Community Health Center. Efforts to reach out to these organization and groups would be about "letting our teachers and parents know that there are resources out there."

She also wants to equip teachers with the right resources in terms of textbooks, professional development and worksheets - "whatever it is that they need."

Hovis wants to increase test scores and the graduation rate in the district by hiring a full-time person to be in charge of mentoring programs for at-risk students. He's conscious of financial concerns, but he believes more coordinated, one-on-one mentoring for students who need it would make kids want to come to school by giving them someone to get constructive feedback from and someone to talk to. Hiring a full-time overseer of student mentoring would help current mentors who "just need someone to help guide them" in continuing the work they do.

He wants to address a lack of trust in the school board administration by community members by making board proceedings more transparent. He wants meetings to be televised so people can have a chance to see board members are acting as good stewards of taxpayer money. "Why not?" he asked of televising meetings, given he said it doesn't cost much to do it.

He also wants to address discipline issues in schools by having building administrators be more proactive in going to classrooms personally with teachers to help them resolve issues. "To help teachers" is a principal's purpose, he said.

On increased academic performance, Bruce wants to "take steps to ensure that continues." He wants to identify resources for staff that will help them improve assessment of how well students are learning and to self-evaluate how well they're teaching.

He wants to "stand behind the community's expectations of student behavior." "We're late to that game," he said of the district's response to changing demographics. He added there are a number of ways to approach addressing behavioral issues, but he wants to add to investments made over the past three years in staff and classroom resources by increasing local partnerships. One partnership in particular he'd like to explore is with the University of Missouri, perhaps through its social work, psychology or behavioral health programs.

Bruce wants to address facilities and space needs in a "purposeful, thoughtful" manner - including making good on the promises made to the East Elementary School community about addressing overcrowding issues on the east side of the city.

To overcome issues of trust between the community and board, Sterling wants to promote transparency. In addition to having board meetings live-streamed, she personally wants to keep in touch as much as possible with community members by turning her campaign website into a blog of updates about monthly meetings and other events. She also wants to use social media to reach out.

She also wants to "hold the board accountable" for promises made to the East Elementary School community and wants to "champion" the push for a new elementary school on the east side, regardless of what happens with the second high school proposal in April.

Sterling cited a recent incident of a JCPS student bringing a gun to school as "a symbolic head" of all the other underlying student behavioral issues. She wants to keep administrators and teachers on the same page in terms of awareness about resources to deal with behavioral issues. "Some amount of mental health first aid training (for teachers) would be beneficial," she said, adding such training would allow teachers to notice "red flags" in students and provide opportunities to prevent issues from getting worse.

She also wants to look at other school districts with similar demographics and examine what they've done right and wrong to get suggestions about how to deal with behavioral issues.

 

Candidates establish campaign committees

Five of the seven registered candidates running for three available seats on the Jefferson City Public Schools District's Board of Education in the April 4 election have established campaign committees.

As of Friday afternoon (Feb. 17), the Missouri Ethics Commission (MEC) reported none of the committees had filed full disclosure reports with financial information for the current year. There were also no electronic reports available for viewing online.

Incumbent board Vice President Steve Bruce's committee "Steve Bruce for JC School Board" was established on Dec. 21. Rebecca Gordon is treasurer, and Wade McDonald is deputy treasurer. Brad Bates is campaign manager.

Victoria Sterling's "Friends of Victoria Sterling" was established Jan. 3. Jackie Coleman is treasurer, and J. Mat Kendrick is deputy treasurer.

Paul Graham's "Paul Graham for School Board" was established Jan. 17, and Jay Seaver is treasurer.

Scott Hovis's "Scott Hovis for School Board" was established Jan. 29, and Thomas Shimmens is treasurer.

Lori Massman's "Massman for Education" was established Feb. 6. Nancy Wilson is treasurer, and Andy Fechtel is chairman of the committee.

MEC did not display any current information about candidates J. Don Salcedo and Joshua Harmon.

 

Correction: Jefferson City Public Schools Board of Education candidate J. Don Salcedo worked in the Central Missouri area for 17 years. He has lived in Jefferson City for five years, after his retirement from the Missouri National Education Association in 2012. The text above has been corrected to reflect this.