Columbia Board of Education candidate interview: Paul Harper

​COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Paul Harper is one of three Columbia Board of Education members seeking reelection in April.

Like his fellow incumbent candidates, Harper has served one three-year term on the board. Four candidates are seeking three seats on the board. Harper is joined by the ballot by incumbents April Ferrao and John Lyman and newcomer Dr. Keary Husain.

LUCAS GEISLER: Welcome, everybody, to ABC 17's Your Voice, Your Vote coverage for 2026. I'm Lucas Geisler, and we're talking to several candidates that you'll see on April's ballot. I'm joined here with Paul Harper. Hello, Mr. Harper, thanks for joining us. Well, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to the viewers and tell us what it is you're running for.

PAUL HARPER: Sure, my name is Paul Harper. I'm running for reelection to the Columbia school board.

GEISLER: Why run for reelection? Why do you want to be back on the board?

HARPER: You know, I think we've done a lot of good work in the last three years, and I'd like to continue that good work. We've worked on a lot of policies, we've worked on improving pay for teachers, improved working conditions, we've increased the school APR [Annual Performance Report], which is how DESE [the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] scores school districts significantly since I've been on the board, and I'd like to continue that good work.

GEISLER: What is the most important issue you think facing CPS at this time?

HARPER: I think the emerging issue right now is funding. I think if you were paying attention to the last board meeting, you saw that we're losing some of our federal funding. Federal grants are starting to dry up. We don't know what's going on with the state. I mean, we were all looking at the revenue numbers coming in with the state, and they're just not coming in the way that they were anticipated. So we expect some revenue shortfalls in the next few years.

GEISLER: Any thoughts on, as a board member, how you expect to handle that issue?

HARPER: Well, we actually talked about that some at the meeting last night. We're doing a lot of strategic planning right now. We do have a lot of deferred maintenance, and some other things that are probably boring to your viewers, but, there's some of the nuts and bolts for a district is making sure that we have that infrastructure in place and of course we need funds to ensure that the maintenance is done and all of that so we are working on it. Right now, we have, we are working on our strategic plan, and we are working on plans for that deferred maintenance so that we can continue even if there are some budget shortfalls.

GEISLER: The district is, I know, still trying to work on building up attendance again since the last several years. I know it's been a focus for CPS for many years now. How do you anticipate trying to help keep building those numbers back up?

HARPER: Well, I mean from a board standpoint, we're putting in resources for home school coordinators and things like that, so that we can do that. Of course, we wanna make sure our school environment is inviting to our children, and you know that's some of the things from the board level. We're always at the 10,000-foot range looking down so it's broad policy, so we've been working on policies that are more student-friendly and easily understood. We're working on providing resources to teachers because, of course, the focus is always on that boots on the ground group of people who are our teachers, counselors, the people who are working directly with the students.

GEISLER: School safety, always on the top of minds of parents and students and staff and faculty there. What's something that you have worked on in your first term, or looking forward to continuing if you get a second term, on making sure that schools are safe?

HARPER: Well, of course, we've added the weapons detectors and things like that in the past. One of the things that I'm currently working on is, of course. You're gonna hear me talk about policies because I, you know, I love the policies, and we're working on the bully policy, making it so that our data is good with regard to that, making sure that everybody is reporting bullying so that we can actually, you know, work on those issues. Um, right now I don't think it's being reported as well as it should, so we're going to try to improve the policy so that it is reported more.

GEISLER: How will a board policy help with that?

HARPER: Policy is the top level, but we need to also change the process, how everybody is doing things and the culture. And right now, people hear of things, but they don't necessarily put it in the system. They don't necessarily track it. And the best way we can do things to fix things is by having data. And so that's one of the issues, also making sure that, in the broader scheme, making sure students who are bullied are supported, ensuring that the staff is doing what they need to do to process those things and to make sure that even if it's not bullying, we have a student that has been has been, has had something happen to them. And we need to make sure we're supporting them, whether or not it actually fits under the definition of bullying, so we're making the policy so that all of those things happen. And then of course we're gonna set the expectations that our staff and our teachers and our principal and our administrators follow all of those policies, which I think we've been doing recently. I think if you look out there we've increased the number of administrative procedures so that these things are being followed, and I think it will improve behavior.

GEISLER: I imagine as a board member, reports of bullying are something you hear a lot from the public, probably something the public brings to you and often other board members. How would you describe the board's current relationship with the public on not just bullying, but all sorts of different topics?

HARPER: I think the board has a pretty good relationship. We've done a lot of things in the last three years to improve that. We've added listening sessions for board members where about three times a year for the last two years we've been having board around town, various locations both in schools and in other areas such as the library so that the public can come to us and talk about their issues because it's very important for us to hear about that. I just talked about the strategic plan when we're talking about the strategic plan, we're getting public input to find out what's actually important to our community because I know I have the things that I think are important, but this isn't just my school district, you know, I'm just one person in a community of over 100,000. I wanna know what everybody else thinks about what that is and we're going to make that a part of our planning. We added a special education task force temporarily to get parent input on how our special education program is working. So we're trying to do that and provide more community input into everything we do because we're a public school. We support the community, and I think as we bring those voices in, the community supports us better.

GEISLER: We talked about funding a little bit earlier in this conversation, and I know Jefferson City has a lot of different ideas for K through 12 funding. Do you support the idea of performance-based funding for school districts?

HARPER: Well, yes and no. I would say the problem with that is that a lot of times, that means that the funds will go to the schools that don't need it. So, a lot of times, the underperforming schools are the ones that need the most resources, so if we're only focusing on those that are performing, what happens to the students who are in the underperforming schools? So I do have some concerns with focus, with that being a primary focus, because we need to support all students, not just provide resources to those that are already doing well.