Jefferson City Board of Education candidate interview: Ryan Towner
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
ABC 17 News is talking to candidates in select April election races about their positions on key issues.
Below is the transcription of the full interview with Ryan Towner, a candidate for the Jefferson City Board of Education. Towner is one of seven candidates seeking three seats.
LUCAS GEISLER: Welcome, everybody, to the ABC 17 News, Your Voice, Your Vote, voter guide for April 2026. I'm Lucas Geisler joined now by Mr. Ryan Towner. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us here. Would you mind just starting by introducing yourself and what it is that you're running for?
RYAN TOWNER: My name is Ryan Towner. I'm a 1999 Jefferson City High School graduate running for school board on April 7, so I hope everyone goes out and votes. I've been a lifelong resident of Jefferson City, my wife and I have five kids, four currently in elementary school there, and so I'm running to support them, to support teachers and administration, I think, continue the work that, everybody, you know, wants to see improvement in schools and helping kids, helping teachers, and so I'm passionate about that, being a being a parent, so I want to help support the community as well and help others, carry what the administration's done, carrying that work forward.
GEISLER: What inspired you to want to get in the race for school board?
TOWNER: You know, everybody says that the pay is good! But no, uh, do they say that? Yeah, I've heard it said.
No, honestly, it's, I do a lot of community work with the United Way, with Nichols Career Center, with State Technical College, actually Columbia Area Career Center, advisory panels, as well as Salvation Army, and so I like to get involved with the community that I live and work in, and so this is one way. They have three spots open, so I, you know, I talked with several other former board members as well as my wife, and she was supportive of the idea, and they were all like, 'Yeah, I think you'd be great.' So, I'm looking forward to trying to help in some way. Obviously being a parent too, you always want the best for your kids, and want to help them and help their teachers, so I want to, I think I can help, and so I, that's my main reasons why I'm running, I'd, I'd like to try and help.
GEISLER: What do you think is the biggest issue facing Jefferson City schools right now?
TOWNER: I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of talk about funding. There's always talk about funding, I think. I've heard a lot about transportation issues and things like that. But honestly, a lot of what, a lot of the reasons why I would like to try and be a part of it isn't because I'm bringing an agenda. I'd like for parents and teachers to bring those items and issues to the school board, to the administration, and then have us help work on those issues. I'm not trying to come in with any big set agenda that, you know, I want to get things done. I always want to help solve problems as they come up, and I think my experience, being involved in various other advisory panels and with the United Way facilitates that for me. So I like to problem solve, so I'm looking forward to helping solve those problems as they come up, but I've heard a lot of some of the rumblings ... So I'd like to do what I can to help, sure.
GEISLER: And what do you make of the transportation issues that you brought up? This is the first year that Jefferson City is trying out with a new bus vendor. What are you hearing? What's, what is your approach if, if you're elected to the board, on how to really manage the transportation thing?
TOWNER: It's challenging for the school district because they outsource, obviously, so there's, they have less, I think of a vested interest in doing good, whereas if they're, I think if they were a part of it, I think that would help facilitate that, you know, because then you're all under the same roof, so to speak. I think that poses some challenges. I think the staff, I think there's a lot of talk about staffing problems, so finding bus drivers is also a big deal. You can't, can't get kids to school if you don't have people to ... drive the bus. I don't necessarily have, you know, magic wands for any big solutions like that, but I would love to try and help solve those problems, like I said.
I think, you know, I like to solve problems, and I think that some of the things that, where it's working, in some areas where they don't have a problem or they don't have an issue with drop-off, pick up, anything like that, those areas are fine. Why are those areas OK, and others aren't served as well? Is that simply just a staffing problem, or are there other logistics that are involved with that? But you know, again, I would love to dig into those details with other board members and the administration and parents and see if we can help find solutions for that,.
GEISLER: Budgeting expenses, revenues, it's all, you know, a big, a big part of being on the board, and I think every district has a lot of questions about where money is going to come from in the future, for lots of different reasons. Jefferson City, they're offering, next year, big raises for teachers and staff there. With that Comes a rising expenses, health insurance getting more expensive as well. What do you bring to the table if elected to the board on being able to manage the budget for the district?
TOWNER: That's a great question. So part of the United Way, I mentioned the United Way, that I've been a part of, fortunate to be a part of for over 10 years, I serve on the fund allocation committee. So the fun part of the responsibilities of the fund allocation committee is exactly to look at a nonprofit's P&L [profit and loss] or the balance sheet and then analyze, 'Hey what are they doing right, what are they doing wrong, where could be some areas of improvement where can be some areas that they can, might be able to save?' So financials is not abnormal to me to look at. I've been a part of some of the board meetings as well attend them, and in the recent one where they talked about the budget for next year, they talked about the health insurance challenges. A lot of that was brought up, and you know I followed it along without problems, so being a business owner as well, I'm familiar with, you know, all of those aspects of managing a budget, trying to cut where it needs to be cut or see if there's things that come up that are unexpected.
Health insurance, obviously, you know, is huge, so any of those areas, none of them scare me, not unfamiliar to any of that ... I'm just dealing with more dollars. The same challenges exist whether you're managing $100 or $100 million.
GEISLER: I feel pretty comfortable saying that school safety is high on the minds of lots of people involved in schools, right? Students, parents, teachers, staff, just about everyone worries about it in some capacity in lots of different ways. What's something that, if elected to the board, you'd like to do in regards to school safety? Are there things Jefferson City needs to be doing, more in that regard, or things that you like that you see right now that you want to keep pushing forward on?
TOWNER: That's a great question. I think this has been a good topic as well, covered on some of the other forUms that have been a part of, and so my approach, I think, is multifaceted. So you start with one end of the spectrum, you know, so from teachers to students to parents to administration. There's an aspect of mental health or of being able to recognize a problem before it becomes a problem. Well, you have that aspect of it and that could be improvements or you train people to spot problems before they become a problem. Or you train people on how to help whenever they need help, so you have that, that area of the spectrum. You also have school resource officers that I think Jeff City does an amazing job with, and those relationships are important, so you have that aspect of it, as well as physical security. So doors being locked, cameras, things in the classroom, or in the schools themselves, so you have that aspect of security and safety as well. A lot of that comes down to training, so making sure that people know what to do in the event, God forbid, something does happen, or may happen, training those people on what to do, and then making sure that all of those elements are in place to prevent or negate something from happening, so that when something does happen, if something does happen, then people know exactly what to do. So I think ... it's not a simple problem with a simple solution. But I think Jeff City does a great job in that, but again, that doesn't mean that there's nothing to do. I think there's, you always want to be improving, you know, tweaking and finding areas of concern or areas where there could be something that could be done better. So yeah, I'd love to do that.
GEISLER: What do you think the current relationship is between the school board and the public? Is this something you think there's a good, open, honest, or, I guess, transparent relationship there? Is this something that could use work if you're elected to the board? Is there anything you'd like to do as far as the relationship between the board and the public?
TOWNER: I think transparency is always a good thing whenever it comes to any entity whether it's a public entity like that that receives funding in the way that the school board does or the school district does. That transparency is important whenever somebody spends that dollar, or they give that dollar, how it's being spent... I keep coming back to the United Way, but it really is a very good microcosm of what I enjoy doing, what I like doing.
So through that process you find where that dollar spent, how that dollar spent, and there's people all along the way that's watching that dollar, that's their responsibility to make sure that that dollar that's being spent is spent in the best way to serve that entity, that organization. So it's not all that dissimilar, you know, the funding. Where, how the funding comes in is obviously different, but at the end of the day, people want to know, or people want to feel good that whenever they're paying taxes that that dollar is being spent in the best way, and I think the easiest way to do that is transparency. I don't know that I can speak to how exactly everything is today. I think there's always room for improvement, and I think I would, I think clarity and transparency is the way that you eliminate any issues or problems between a public funding source like that, the school board, or the school district, in my opinion.
