JEFFERSON CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION: Adam Gresham

The chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe has his eyes on his own public office. For Adam Gresham, that office is a seat on the Jefferson City Board of Education.

Gresham, who is also a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said when he announced his candidacy that he wants "to be part of the solution to help students learn and achieve more."

Should JC Schools bring back masks if we get hit with another coronavirus case surge?

I understand the steps that were initially taken when the pandemic came out in 2020. I think that we've progressed enough beyond that and have a better understanding, certainly a better understanding as it relates to the risks that kids are at, both from the perspective of contracting it and, and transmitting it. And over time, I think we've come to realize that there are some very serious dilatory effects of having masks on kids. I don't want to compromise safety in any way. And ... hopefully viewers that watch this don't get that impression. But the efficacy of masks ... if you do a cost balance out of it, I don't think that it provides a level of protection that people maybe we originally thought, well-intentioned people originally thought. I don't envision a need, and I would be very, very hard-pressed to be in favor of putting masks back on.

How do you think the JC Board of Education handled navigating the previous pandemic surges?

I think we did a good job. You can look at some places, whether it be on the East Coast, or the West Coast, or some places in between that kids are just now getting back into the classroom. And that is, in my opinion, absolute tragedy. There's been a lot of learning lost, a lot of social learning lost. More importantly, a lot of just education that students need lost. And so I give Jeff City Public Schools a great deal of credit for being in-seat. My wife is a teacher here in Jefferson City, I know the struggles that teachers had ... and not just teachers, students as well, and administrators. COVID was a tough thing. And so that was a difficult thing to get through. I think ... the district did a good job in staying in-seat and trying to keep learning going. And so I give them a great deal of credit for that.

Is teaching about history, race and LGBTQ issues being done appropriately in JC Schools classrooms?

How I define critical race theory is considering one group either inherently oppressed or oppressive. ... That's one of the pillars that I'm running on. I am completely for teaching history, quite frankly, I think that we should teach more history, I think students should leave with a better understanding of the Constitution with a better understanding of American history and history in general. But if we're talking American history, we need to understand that history is not always pretty. There are some ugly aspects to American history, I have no desire whatsoever to gloss those over. Don't want to do that. What I don't want to see happen is that again, that teachers or students are going to go into a building and they are somewhat indoctrinated in terms of a belief that one group is inherently oppressed, or one group is inherently oppressive.

I think some of the turmoil that you've seen across the country is, we'd always known intuitively that elections closest to where we live matter. But I think between COVID and a variety of things, I think that there's an increased awareness of that. And quite frankly, parents and taxpayers are looking at the product that they're getting sometimes in their public schools. In the Jeff City instance, they're saying, hey, 50% are at or above grade level in reading, 40% at or above grade level in math. I'm not getting the return on investment that I want to and then they begin to look at, hey, you know, what are kids teaching? Are we spending time talking about sexual identity? And in those types of things, or whenever we should be focused on math, on science on reading and writing on history and civics? I am very sympathetic to parents that wonder, are we focused on what we're supposed to be focused on? To be focused on the important things, to prepare kids to be educated and students to be educated so that whenever they get done with school, they're prepared to go to work, go to the military, or go to college. And to the extent that we're focusing on social issues or doctrine, indoctrinating people on social issues that take away from that, I don't think that the focus then is in the right spot.

How accessible do you think the school board is to the public?

Not accessible enough. You know, one of the things as I've gone through this campaign, that one of the things that I've heard is that it's very difficult to get in front of the board. For a school board, an agenda is very, very important, you have to have an agenda in order to do business, I get that. And I understand that completely. There is a perception out there amongst a lot of parents, and citizens that, hey, it is very difficult to get in front of the board, because they tailor the agenda so very, so very narrowly, that it's almost impossible to get a voice. That's not the way that things should be. And so I think that there's definitely a lot of room for transparency. There's decisions that are being made by the board right now that I think are being made without the appropriate amount of public input. And so that's definitely a focus, that's something we need to do, there was a lot of room for improvement in that regard. And that's one of the things that people consistently bring up to me, as I'm talking with folks in Jefferson City about things that the board can improve on. So there's a lot of work left to do.

Are there any other issues you see as important to JC Schools?

I think the number one thing that's out there is discipline. And, look, my background is as a Marine. And so I spent seven years in the Marine Corps. And I tell people this, in every instance, I have no expectation whatsoever that teachers run their classroom like a Marine Corps drill instructor, that is not what they need to do. However, I have every expectation, and I think parents have an expectation, for teachers to be able to run their classroom, set standards for behavior, hold every student equally accountable for doing that. And with the expectation that administration then supports those teachers doing that.

We should be hiring good teachers. We do have good teachers, we have great teachers within the district, we need to allow them to run their classrooms and to manage their classrooms appropriately. And so ... a lot of what folks bring up to me as I'm talking to them throughout the district is discipline issues. Why is it that we can consistently allow a student to, day in a day out, frequently interrupt the learning of the other 28 or 29 kids in the class? And so there's not a good answer to that. The answer is that we ought not do that. And so we need to trust the teachers that we hired, the trust that they know what they're doing, because they do allow them to set expectations for the classroom, and allow them to hold students accountable for those expectations. And to do that equally across the board. And so I'm a firm believer that whenever you expect excellence, you set the bar high, students, employees, anybody will tend to raise themselves to that bar. If you set him low, you're going to get low performance. So discipline within the classroom, within the district is very, very important.