Oskaloosa School Board Candidate – Tom Richardson

Oskaloosa School Board Candidate Tom Richardson

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Oskaloosa School Board is holding elections on September 13th, 2011 for its board. They will be filling Director Districts 1, 3, 4 and 6. Only one race is being challenged, that being the one for Director District 4 between the incumbent Donald Patterson and Charlie Comfort.

Tom Richardson is seeking his first term in office with the Oskaloosa School Board for Director District 6. Tom took time out of his busy schedule to visit with me about his candidacy for the board. We covered questions and recent concerns, expressed by our readers, about the Oskaloosa School System.

You can join him on his Facebook page HERE – Tom Richardson for Oskaloosa School Board

My first question is: “What motivates you to be on the school board?”

“What motivates me is I have a great appreciation for education, not only for what it does for the individual, but for the community. I know that if we have a great education system in Oskaloosa, that’s going to help out businesses that want to relocate here or expand here. It’s also I think our duty to give the children of Oskaloosa the best education that we can. It’s a changing world. Technology is changing, and they need to be able to compete well throughout the state of Iowa throughout the world, wherever they choose to live. I would like to have them stay here in Oskaloosa, if possible start businesses here and help this community grow.”

“What do you believe your role as a School Board Member is?”

“I think that the educational experts are the administration and the teachers. They’re the ones that developed the curriculum that we’re going to use for instructing the students and they are the ones in the classroom working with them. I think as a school board member my role would be to look at performances, how we are doing compared to other schools in the state. How is Iowa doing within the United States in education? Look at what programs within our curriculum are going well, and if they are going well, what we can to to make them even better. I do not like the idea of staying put. I do not like the idea of good enough, or leaving things as is. We need to continue to strive for improvement even in the areas where we are doing good, because other communities, other school systems, other states, other countries they’re all improving, and in some cases faster than we are in the United States. So I think by bringing out those questions, what are we doing well, what can we do to improve upon those, and also the areas where we’re not doing so well. What can we do differently to improve our student performance in those areas? What are other towns in Iowa doing that are successful in those areas? What information is available from the State of Iowa is available to help improve? How about feedback from parents and teachers to improve those areas. So I think my role is to be involved with administration, teachers, parents and the entire community to work on a continuous improvement of all those areas we’re doing good at and in those areas where we need improvement at.”

“How would you address parents that are displeased with fees such as a $25 parking fee and a towel fee, when it’s reported that often there is no towel to use?”

“My children are in elementary school so I have limited knowledge or experience with this, but I can answer. I’d like to see a list of fees we do charge the students. The past year I’ve attended most of the school board meetings, I attend a lot of PTO meetings so I could be more well informed on this before actually running. I know there was a discussion at a previous board meeting I think in June where Mr. Reiter suggested taking a look at some of the fees that we’re being charged and that perhaps and that some of those needed to be looked at to be removed. If there’s a towel fee and towels are not being provided, we’ve got to find out what the reason for that is. Someone’s not providing the goods or service we promised to the students who are paying for that. We need to find out why. What’s the cause? What needs to be done to change that so they can be supplied, just like we supply them with lunch that they are paying for.”

“Do you believe that the school calendar needs looked at? Do you believe items like early outs on Wednesday’s and Spring Break need to be reviewed?”

“My understanding with the early outs is that’s professional development opportunities for the teachers, which I fully support. I know that they’ve also had some professional development days done on full days where there’s no students at all. I think we do need to look at that calendar. I know that was discussed at a school board meeting this past Spring and there was a great deal of discussion on that; not everyone was necessarily in favor of what was voted on there. My biggest concern about the early outs is the safety of some of the children. When you’re drivin’ through town at 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon you might be expecting that there be kids out of school riding bicycles, crossing the street, and such. At 1:00, 1:30, 2:00 in the afternoon a lot of times people are not necessarily expecting that we’re gonna have 2,000 elementary or middle school or high school students out in the public. I’m just afraid that there could be either a traffic issue with all these kids out, there could be issues where parents, both parents are working in a household and maybe some younger kids are at home by themselves or maybe they’re supposed to be at home by themselves and they’re not. I don’t want to wait for some serious incident to happen when we could have addressed this in advance. I know Mr. Reiter, for this current school year, I give him a lot of credit because I believe he reduced, in half, the number of early outs. There were some full days for teacher professional development training built into the schedule, so that’s an improvement. I’d like to see the administration, school board, and teachers work together to find a way to get the teachers the professional development they need without having the early outs, if possible.”

The new laptop program: “Do you believe that the costs of $100 and $200, respectively, for repairs are fair for low income families?”

” First I want to say that I completely support the idea of the 1 and 1 laptop program. It’s a brand new program, I know there is other schools in the state doing it. It’s new to Oskaloosa. I wouldn’t expect that we’ll have a perfect program the first year, but we have to start somewhere. I think  100 or 200 dollar charge for repairs, especially if we have an  insurance policy in place through the school for some repairs-as I understand from some of the previous board meetings, that may be higher than it should be. But, it’s too early to tell. We don’t have any… we haven’t had a year of experience with any laptops going home with all these kids. So, that needs to be, I think, looked at over the next year to see how necessary that even is going to be. At the same time though, I was also at that board meeting when the board approved the 1 plus million dollars to be spent for the laptops. These are laptops that our taxpayers are paying for. We have to be responsible for them. Everybody needs to be responsible for things and this is something that fits in that area. The kids need to be responsible for the laptop that they’re gonna be taking home. It’s a tool, as I think at one of the board meetings when they talked about this program, Dr. Cooksley said ‘This is a tool, not the only tool, but it’s one additional tool that these kids can learn more and more with, and it’s a tool that should help them expand their education, but they need to be aware of  the responsibility of it as well.'”

Is it true that a student that is assaulted in school by another student can not defend themselves with also being punished. This could have other impacts to parents and students, such as repairs costs for the ’1 and 1′ laptop.

“I’m going to have limited knowledge on this. It sounds like a specific policy in the school that I am not aware of. I guess I do want to say that, without knowing the policy, I do think a student absolutely should have the right to defend themselves. Whether or not a computer is damaged in this type of event, I guess I’m going to rely on the principal. They’re in the building. They know the students. If there are others who witnessed what happened that may help decide who’s responsible for the damage. I have zero tolerance for any type of bullying or discrimination in the school, which I’m sure the policies at the school reads that way as well.”

Parents have expressed that their concerns are not being listened to. “What steps would you suggest the parents take, and school board members take in order to foster better communication?”

“I think good communication could solve probably half of all the issues we’re going to come up against in the next year or four years for that matter. I think the school board needs to be very approachable. I would like to see anyone that’s in the community, parent, student, what ever the case is, if they have a serious question, suggestion for improvement or concern about anything, I think they need to have the ability to approach the board or board member, through email for example, and be very comfortable doing that knowing that they’re going to have the full attention of these people on the board and that a good conscience effort is made to listen and to search for a solution and to respond within a reasonable amount of time. The parents, I think they need to be not hesitant to contact the right person in the school if it’s a question about their student performing in class. That probably should be a question for the teacher, or the guidance counselor, or the principal. I would expect the school employee to respond in a short amount of time, within a day. If they don’t have an answer, if they cannot respond with the solution, that’s okay. Just to acknowledge that the parent or the community member has contacted them and that this is something that has their full attention and they are going to be talking to the right people, getting the right people involved to get an answer to them.”

“What plans and ideas do you bring to the table to help Oskaloosa Schools continue to improve and grow in the next 4 years?”

“As a new school board member, I realize I’ve got a lot to learn. I met with Mr. Reiter one day a couple of months ago just to get a better understanding of what the school board positioning includes. One of the biggest things I need to get a good handle on is financing from the State of Iowa, how school financing takes place. It seems to be a complicated issue but something I can learn. I’m going to commit to the training necessary so I can have a better understanding of that. Another thing I’d like to continue as soon as I’m elected on is to communicate with administration and teachers and parents and community members on what those items we need for improvement. Set goals for what we need to do to make those area’s better. Tasks need to be assigned to people, follow up needs to be done within a certain amount of time frame so we get these things addressed that are opportunities for improvement and measure where appropriate.”

Now I open it for the candidate to talk about what they want, their goals and desires for the Oskaloosa school system.

“My children are in elementary so there are things in middle school and high school I’ve just not been exposed to yet, but I certainly welcome those topics to come to me from teachers and from parents so we can work together solutions for what ever they may be. The process for becoming a school board candidate you have to have at least 50 signatures, I stopped at 70. But the reason for saying that, I talked to a lot of people about what they thought being important. What they see as good things. What they see as opportunities for Oskaloosa School System, and that was an excellent thing to do. Heard a lot of good things. A lot of people feel like we’re doing a good job in this town. I’d like to see us do a little bit better. One of the things I do outside of work is I’m in the Oskaloosa City Band. I’ve been in it for 24 years, been on the board of directors for at least half of those years. I see three things they have in common, on a different scale of course but what we do hopefully within the school system. As director of the City Band, I don’t get paid anything for that, and the good thing about that is you do it because you want to, it’s something you want to do. You want to be involved with it, you want to make things better. We’re striving to put on the best quality performance we can. A second thing is we want everyone in the band to have a good time. We want people treated right and to do a good job. And the third thing is we have a budget from the City of Oskaloosa. We spend money on payroll on music that we purchase, and on instruments we have to buy, and we have a certain budget we have to live within, so all these things I have mentioned with the goals for improving education, they all have to be done within a budget, and it’s a large number of dollars that we spend in the school system, but we have to operate within the budget. “