Cobbins, Snodgrass win Columbia Board of Education seats
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
New-comer Alvin Cobbins and incumbent Jeanne Snodgrass won last night's Columbia Board of Education election.
Three candidates ran for those two seats: John Potter, Alvin Cobbins and incumbent Jeanne Snodgrass. Cobbins and Snodgrass largely agree on many issues, while Potter is the outlier as a more conservative candidate.
Last week, ABC 17 News asked each candidate their views on charter schools.
Snodgrass is the Columbia Board of Education's vice president. She said that there was a learning curve when she was first elected, but she hopes to continue serving with a focus on raising student achievement through safety in the classroom.
"You have to be in the classroom to learn, looking at behaviors in the classroom, and also how we are discipline, applying discipline across the district, making sure it's really being applied equitably so that everybody is clear about what consequences are and that our teachers and our students can be safe in the classroom," Snodgrass said.
Cobbins is a new candidate for the Board of Education. Cobbins said he hopes to unite everyone in Columbia by standing in the gap and bringing everyone to the table.
"It's really important that we get parents and grandparents, the community, the teachers, administrators. It's really important that we bring all of those folks together and help resolve issues and let everybody know that they are important," Cobbins said.
Potter said he ran to be the voice he believes is underrepresented in Columbia public education: the conservative voice. Potter wanted to bring attention to the district's cell phone policy, or lack thereof.
"We can take that burden off of the teachers so the teachers don't have to use their discretion on policing phones in the classroom," Potter said. "I think we need to provide a distraction free classroom for all the students and and a district wide cell phone policy would do that."
