Columbia Board of Education race: 3 candidates battle for pair of open seats

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ) 

Three candidates are vying for a pair of open seats on the Columbia Board of Education.

On April 8, Columbia and Boone County voters will decide between current Board President Suzette Waters, Erica Dickson and Ken Rice. Two-term Boardmember Blake Willoughby will not seek reelection. 

Here is how each candidate stands on some of the major issues facing the district over the past year. 

Suzette Waters

Suzette Waters, is seeking her second term on the board and currently serves as its president. She says her passion for public education is what has motivated her to continue her work on the board 

“I think public education is the most critical part  of our infrastructure as a society," she said. "And being on the school board allows me to advocate for public education  and put my energy into ensuring that CPS is the best place  to educate all students.” 

Waters played a role in hiring the district’s new superintendent, Jeff Klein. She also praised the district’s state-recognized career center program, which promotes workforce development and gives students the skills needed to be competitive in the workforce. 

“I'm not going to take credit for any of the great things happening at CPS because it takes the work of the thousands of people that work there,” Waters said. “But one thing that I think CPS does exceptionally well: Is prepare secondary students for life beyond graduation. We have college-preparatory opportunities, we have AP courses, we have dual enrollment, we have early college. And that allows a lot of students to get an associate's degree or take college-level courses and earn credit in college while still being in high school. “ 

Waters believes that the only way to succeed as a society is to educate all of our youth, a mission she says she has been committed to during her time at CPS. 

“Part of my role as the board president has been to be a fierce advocate for public education across the state,” Waters told ABC 17 News. “I've been in Jeff City multiple times. I've interacted with legislators, I've interacted with other community leaders  to always keep public education part of their conversations and to advocate for funding to come to traditional public districts.” 

After spending a term as school board president, Waters said one of her next focuses would be on student attendance.

“I'm looking forward to developing some solutions for increasing our attendance overall as a district because that does drive student achievement,” Waters said. 

She also aims to address achievement gaps between students, an issue she says has come up frequently on the campaign trail and has been an ongoing discussion across “decades of education”. 

“The conversations that we've had as a Board and with administration, have been focused on drilling down into the data to understand is that at the student level: How can we address achievement so that that we're focusing on the growth of every student? Not just the growth of a population at large or the district in aggregate, but student growth at the individual level,” Waters said. 

Erica Dickson

Erica Dickson began working for Columbia Public Schools as an attendant secretary in 2016. She has also served as an instructional aide, homeschool director and most recently, the assistant director of student services. 

“I remember being in that position and looking at our data and feeling like there were certain populations of students that weren't seeing success and honestly feeling like not enough was being done about it,” Dickson said. 

She left the role in August to help establish what she calls an “Educational Dula Pilot,” which helps people in the community navigate the educational system. However, after seeing recent test scores, Dickson said she became motivated to run for the board. 

“I saw the recent celebration of the increase in scores, which is great. I still saw when you look at the broken down data, that there were students that weren't seeing success combined with our recent transition in leadership,” Dickson said. “I felt like it was a good time for me to step in and stand in the gap for those students.” 

Dickson believes her experience working a variety of roles inside the district gives her an advantage. 

“Another advantage for me is having been entrenched in the community for so long and involved in different community efforts. I really feel like I could use my social capital to help folks engage in the system more and help us take innovative approaches to doing that,” Dickson said. 

Dickson has briefly worked with Klein during her time with the district. She said she is excited about the hire, but added after looking at test scores, one of her focuses, if elected, is to take innovative approaches to help students with unique needs grow within the district. 

As a parent of someone who is currently in CPS, Dickson said she would bring multiple perspectives to the board. 

“Being transparent about the things that I feel need to be improved, but also knowing that I am coming into this as a member of a team and we will have to work as a team to push this community forward,” Dickson said. 

Ken Rice

Ken Rice, a three-year Columbia resident, is making his first bid for the board.

Rice said he has several friends who are teachers which drew him to the position. However, it was one particular message from a teacher that lit the spark. 

“One called me up in tears one day and just said she really couldn't stand being in the school district anymore. And 25 years as a teacher. My heart went out to her,” Rice said. 

Rice was a director of the same Sunday school that the teacher taught at. However, when she presented with the idea of Rice running for school board, Rice said he talked things over with his wife and initially decided against it, until he received an email from the teacher. 

“She sends me an email that says, ‘Oh, you know, the  superintendent, which I really didn't like, is retiring.’  And I said, ‘Oh, that's great.’  Then, I was invited to go to the school board, talking about their best scores yet. I go there and it's like, well, he retired. And it's very interesting that the guy who retired and was overseeing the best scores was not there,” Rice said. 

After learning more information about former Superintendent Brian Yearwood’s departure from the district, Rice believed that the district lacked integrity and transparency. 

“​​I found a lot of problems as a taxpayer with mismanagement, in my opinion, of our dear tax money,” Rice said. “I kept praying on it and, you know, God sort of led me and this is what got me into it. And to be honest, the more I've learned and more I've gotten into it, the more I see a need for someone like myself, whether it's me or someone else who has experience dealing with contracts, CEOs, and proper communication with the public.” 

Rice believes his past leadership experience, which includes being the Cheif Operating Officer for Pickleman’s Franchising, has him well prepared for the role. 

“There's a lack of trust. And when you have a lack of trust, and I said this at a school board meeting, one of my first ones,  you can't lead effectively because everything that's ever done is under a microscope,” Rice said. "If you're not trusted, it's very hard to lead."

Improving the district’s transparency is one of Rice’s top priorities after hearing from people on the campaign trail. He hopes that records of meetings can become more easily available and digestible to parents and stakeholders, and that more information be made available when meetings are held under closed executive sessions that don’t deal with things such as personnel issues or contracts. 

“I hear a lot that this is more transparent than we've been. But here's what I said to the people who said that. So apparently, our transparency was terrible. Now it's just bad. Well, I look for true transparency,” Rice said. 

Rice would also like to implement a parental advisory committee made up of parents, teachers, students, staff administrators, and taxpayers so the board can get the best advice possible when making decisions. Each school would have a group that advises the principal. One person from each school group would then be a part of a superintendent advisory committee.

"That way, the people who are actually involved in the schools and know what's going on give advice to give the best information possible so we can do the things that are necessary in each individual school instead of somebody at Aslin painting a broad stroke to thinking that it's going to solve the problem," Rice explained. "Each school is different."

He added that members could volunteer for the committee however, he also wanted to see how other districts in California and Atlanta, who already have similar committees set up. 

School safety

CPS rolled out a new weapons detection system last April in the hopes of improving school safety.  

Waters said that the early results have been positive, but acknowledged there are still some things to iron out. 

“I think the rollout was, as expected, a little bit bumpy. Putting out that whole new process of getting students, thousands of students in the door through a different door and with a different process was a little bit overwhelming those first couple of weeks of school,” Waters said. “The administration at the buildings has been able to smooth it out. We could use a few more building safety and security aides.  Those conversations about the hiring of people depend on budget and those are covered.”

Waters added that the district is also working on keeping weapons out of the hands of students by issuing a public safety announcement about the safe storage of guns. 

“If we can keep weapons out of the hands of students in the first place, then they can't get to school and nobody wants their child to come across a firearm and harm themselves or somebody else,” Waters said. “I think that is a conversation that was well received, but nothing has been put in place yet.” 

Dickson said the weapons detection system was a good investment. 

The reason why I think it was a good investment is directly related to my most recent role in CPS,  where as the assistant director of Student Services, you're very aware of the occurrences of weapons being on campus, and because that has been a thing, I do think that the weapons detection system was was very necessary,” Dickson said. 

Rice believes the move to add a weapons detection system was a “broad stroke” by the school board. While he acknowledged that some schools may have needed it, he added that there is limited data for the system's effectiveness. 

"I do know that almost every kid you ask knows how to beat the metal detector by just putting a knife in a can like the Stanley Cup and they lift the cans over it. They could put a real sliver of a knife into a laptop and do that. So, it may have been a good thing,” Rice said. “Again, I think it's like a lot of things the school district does, it may have been reactive. We didn't need it. We didn't really think it through. And these are the things that we need to do.” 

Retaining and recruiting teachers 

Teacher retention is one of the three main focuses in the district's continuous school improvement plan. It is also a topic that came up throughout the district’s superintendent search.

Waters said one of the reasons the district hired Klein was his track record of developing professionals and empowering staff. The district is also partnering with the Missouri National Education Association to help gather feedback. 

“One of the ways that the board has engaged in teacher retention pursuits is to partner with MNEA to do a workplace conditions survey. That was done at no cost,” Waters said. “Feedback was considered from all teachers, not just members of the union or members of MSTA, but everyone in the teaching unit, regardless of group affiliation.”

Dickson said the lack of representation among certain groups is concerning, something that she believes can help make the district a more welcoming place that people want to stay in long term. 

“I would like to see us expand our recruitment efforts to the places that inhabit the type of teachers that we would like to attract,” Dickson said. “I talk about how I spent the bulk of my childhood in Jackson, Mississippi, and there was such a diverse representation of not only teachers and principals, but leaders in my community that looked like me.” 

Rice said attracting good teachers starts with listening to them. 

“Everyone talks about pay and benefits. I think those are table stakes. You just have to have good pay and good benefits. But that's not what my teachers are telling me that they need,” Rice said. “They want support when... if there are disciplinary problems in their classrooms, they want support so that they can take care of those disciplinary problems.” 

APR scores 

Waters was pleased with the district's recent APR test scores, but said the next challenge will be maintaining growth for students who have shown “appropriate growth” while students who are behind are making more than a year’s worth of growth. 

“Our current score of 86.5 came in the area of growth and how that growth compared with the other districts in Missouri. So we're in the top 20% of districts in Missouri with that score. Now, the challenge will be to maintain that pace of growth because you can't have you know, you can't have a 16-point increase in growth every single year,” Waters said. 

However, Dickson was not as complimentary, saying the scores highlighted an ongoing issue of the district overlooking students who receive special services like free and reduced lunch. 

“When it became personal for me, being a mother of three, I have a recent graduate, one that's currently at Battle and then one yet to enter the system. So, it was personal for me because one of those groups of students was our Black students,” Dickson said. “It felt like I was going home to what I consider to be our failures. Every day, regardless of socioeconomic status and other things that we might think might be contributing factors that these students still weren't seeing success.”

She added that the scores showed a “clear connection to different areas of Columbia scoring lower than other areas when the data was broken down by school. 

Like Dickson, Rice believes that while the test scores looked good on the surface, the results showed that the district let some students “fall through the gaps.” 

“The initial broad stroke was like, ‘Yay’. But then you look at the disaggregated data and you see, oh, boy, some of the most needy kids, the kids that are minority students, the kids that are on IEPs, the kids are on free or reduced lunch. For decades, they've been failing, and we failed them,” Rice said. 

Cellphones in classrooms

Last year CPS, rolled out a new procedure to keep cell phones out of the classroom. High school students are not allowed to use their phones in “learning environments,” while middle school students must have their phones out of sight from the time the school bell rings.  The Missouri Legislature is working on similar legislation that would ban cellphones in all learning environments. 

Waters believes that the move has been a positive for both teachers and students. 

“That is something that has been well received by students,” Waters said.  “The feedback I've heard from students is that they really like it and certainly is preferred by teachers who no longer have to compete with social media and Netflix and that kind of stuff when they're trying to teach content.” 

Dickson agreed with the decision, but says there are still some concerns over how the ban will impact school safety. 

“I don't think they should be used in the classroom,” Dickson said. “When you see them, instances of fighting being recorded in schools and just them being a distraction, period, things that like at 40, I did not have access to in the school space. I don't know that they are beneficial. I also hear the concerns because of school safety issues, parents wanting to have immediate access to their students.” 

Rice also believes that the move to ban cellphones was the right decision for the district. 

“I totally support it. There is no need for cellphones in school. I mean, some parents say, ‘Hey, I need to be able to get my kid in touch with my child.’ No, what you need is making sure your child is involved in the academic structure so they can learn and become great,” Rice said. 

AMI days

In December, CPS announced the implementation of alternative methods of instruction, aligning with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s incentive program under Senate Bill 727, which defines a "school term" as 169 days. Schools that meet these incentives receive additional funding from the state.  

Under state guidelines, schools must account for a minimum of 36 make-up hours --equivalent to five days -- which can be added to the end of the school year, if needed.

Waters said parameters for AMI days fluctuated throughout the year since being approved by DESE, which resulted in some confusion at the state level. After gathering feedback from teachers and parents, Waters said there is a need for more structure for AMI days. 

“The students that I talked to about it, they wanted it to be, at the secondary level anyways, they wanted it to be a little bit more rigorous,” Waters said. “They wanted more options for like enrichment or challenge. And so that is feedback that we're incorporating.”

Dickson believes that there is room for improvement in how AMI days are structured. 

“Do I feel like our students are getting the same quality of education with AMI days that they would in seat? No, I don't. Do I feel like they could be useful? I do,” Dickson said. “Do I think that it is possible for us to  improve upon what we've done? Yes. Like different school districts that I've looked at,  they've been a little bit more specific and transparent on their websites about how their AMI days are structured, even breaking it down by what's required by grade.” 

Rice believed the way the AMI days were implemented was not beneficial for students. 

“It was a true failure on the district.  It was a joke,” Rice said.  “AMI is an alternative method of instruction, so in other words, that should be a school day. That has to have rigor. Any time you have a class or an environment where you're teaching, there should be some academic rigor.

“To have a school board president say, ‘I don't care about academic rigor, I care about my million dollars.’ That is just a very concerning statement on all points.”