Some thoughts about school boards

(The following is my column for this week's Newton County News.)

Next Tuesday, we go to the polls to vote for municipal and school board candidates.
How we are always able to field enough candidates for school board posts always amazes me. Those who serve on school boards receive no pay, have to go through considerable headaches and are rarely, if ever, praised for their accomplishments.
On the contrary, having covered about 1,000 school board meetings over my 22 years as a reporter I can recall far more times when these unpaid public servants have been the target of public wrath.
If they propose a bond issue or levy increase, they are targeted by people who oppose any such investment of public money, and even those who see a need for a tax or bond proposal often criticize the package presented by the board.
And probably no elected official has to deal with the kinds of emotional issues that school board members deal with on a regular basis.
After all, we are talking about the panel that makes decisions on who will be teaching our children and what our children will be taught.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those who are willing to serve at a job that often requires long hours at no pay.
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Having said that, writing about school board candidates reminds me of the first time I became involved in politics. It was the spring of 1973 and I was a junior at East Newton High School.
About a week before the April school board election, several of us decided, as a joke, to conduct a write-in campaign (even though none of us could vote) for senior Wayne Johnson for the East Newton R-6 Board of Education.
Our slogan was “Tired of the Same Old Lies… Vote for Some New Ones- Vote Wayne Johnson.”
We were pleasantly surprised when Wayne received eight write-in votes. (That was back in the days when it was possible to mount a write-in candidacy at any time and all write-in votes were counted. That was back when there was still some fun in elective politics.)
That candidacy, which we considered to be a successful one, led to the first time I had my work published in a newspaper. Buoyed by our success at running Wayne for school board, we decided to go for broke and have him run a write-in campaign for county court judge (now county commission).
We started the campaign in January 1974, when I wrote a letter to the editor to the Neosho Daily News, under Wayne’s name, complaining about county road conditions and declaring Wayne’s candidacy for county court judge as a write-in candidate.
Neosho Daily reporter Bill Ball did some research and discovered Missouri had no laws preventing an 18-year-old from running for county court, so Wayne filed, and thanks to some hard work and good luck, he became the youngest elected official in Newton County history.
And it all started with the East Newton School Board.