Tomorrow is election day in southwest Missouri. Residents will go to the polls to elect new city council members, determine whether city and municipal bonds will pass and in Joplin voters will elect two new school board members.
Last Friday, KRPS’s Rachel Schnelle interviewed all four candidates running for Joplin School Board within hours of each other.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Rachel first asked candidate Derek Gander about what inspired him to run for Joplin School Board?
DEREK GANDER - And so I previously sat on two terms.
I was part of, kinda I called the recovery of the Huff administration. You know? And then we had a pandemic. So I was part of the small group, Brent Jordan, Jeff Coke and I wrote in the reentry plan that Joplin adopted to get kids back in their seats. And just text message after text message. And phone calls of, you know, hey, this is going back to the Huff administration.
We're getting fat at the top. Again. Things that were going on within the district or within the classroom. The teachers that were calling did not have any confidence in the Board. Lack of confidence in the administration and that really it kind of hurts after you build the district back up after something you know like the previous administration and then you see it starting to go back to that. And I fought hard and hard inside my head about, you know, did I want to get back into this.
And at the end of the day, it's about educating students. And I felt compelled. To you know, to throw my name back in there. Sometimes it takes a loudmouth redneck to rattle cages and. You know, I'm gonna fit back in. I hope I'm looking forward to serving.
RACHEL SCHNELLE - So what do you mean? For background I am from Missouri, but I didn't live in Joplin during the pandemic. Can you elaborate what the Huff administration is?
DEREK GANDER - Ohh. The Huff Administration was the previous administration after the tornado that really put Joplin in a bad financial spot. The teachers. Well, there was, I mean, no respect. The teachers did not feel respected. They were fat with administrators. At the top, you know.
Basically, money being spent on administration that you know could go to our teachers, you know, just for example, the rebuilding of Joplin High school blue seats were ordered for the basketball courts. And nobody caught that and they installed them. Well, of course they're not going to take them back. They've been installed.
So it was just a lack of integrity. It was a lack of transparency. It was a lack of leadership. And I was fortunate to come on. You know, we had a bad spot where we had board members quit, resigned their seats.
That really put Joplin in a bad spot. So. I believe it was one year later after that happened after, you know. Mike Landis, who is now a county Commissioner, I believe he quit.
Can't even remember who else now? You know and and and my thought is you quit the students and you say it was all about the students, but there was way too much politics in it.
And if you know, so I was able to get on the board and and like I say, two colleagues I go to church with Jeff and I met Brent through the board, become good friends with him. We really put our nose to the grindstone and got things lined out.
And I think you know, after seeing, so I've been off the board now for two year. This is my third time running. You know, seeing it progressively get worse and worse and worse. And like I say, I just felt compelled to get back in there, I mean. I've got students, you know, I've got two kids in the district, so.
My son Briggs will be a senior next year. My daughter Bailey will be heading into high school, so I'm. I'm still going to be very, very involved in the school and you know, tax dollars. I mean, I can go on and on about you know. The things why I want to do it when I see. Bloated spending and things like that. I just have to hold our administrators accountable.
RACHEL SCHNELLE - So what are your campaign goals? Is it more transparency?
DEREK GANDER - Transparency, accountability, fiscal responsibility. The teachers have to know that the board is for them. And so here's how it breaks down. The school board is one employee, and that is the Superintendent.
The Superintendent runs the schools. When you're not holding your Superintendent accountable, things tend to get out of hand. We have a lot of, yes people on the board. You know, and that's not good for a school board. It's, you know, you've got six people that vote exactly the same, you've got one that actually asks questions, holds the administration accountable.
Anybody that has any business sense knows if a company everybody gets along and everybody has this image is portrayed that everything is perfect. There's something wrong and it's deep rooted. You know, seeing and hearing about the closed door meetings that bugs the tar out of me.
Because there's a lack of transparency. You know, unfortunately right now, Joplin has a young man running the school district that has no kids, lives with his mother.
Doesn't have those life experiences like you know, myself or John Hurd or any of the other candidates. I mean, children. You know, that's Joplin's in a bad place right now. We're losing teachers we have. An enormous amount of teachers that are not certified. That's a problem.
You know and then with everything that's going on in the country. I mean, you know that doesn't that all it's adding fuel to the fire. I mean, I could go on and on about some of the things that I see and because I do try to stay involved. You know, it's disheartening to see a school district like this with the facilities that we have and we have great teachers.
But when you start getting fat at the top and the teacher start getting lost. You know it’s I guess it's a difficult position to be in, but our board has to be held accountable, hold our Superintendent accountable to make these schools better.
RACHEL SCHNELLE - What is the first thing that you would want to do if elected to the school board?
DEREK GANDER - So one of the first things I would like to change at the end of the board meeting, previously we did pluses and deltas. And pluses and deltas are what we have, what we're doing good and what we're doing bad. The board right now does not do that. I feel that's a lack of transparency to our stakeholders.
They have to be involved, they have to know what's going on. Everything is not perfect within the school district. There's a few bullying policies that I'd like to change. You know, right now a kid can be bullied and pushed to the point and touched and physically harmed, which we just saw on the video. And the minute that student that's being bullied defends themselves, they're kicked out of school.
They're kicked out of school for 10 or suspended for 10 days. That needs to change and I think we need to review finances. And see if there's anything more that we can do for our teachers. We've got to do better on phonics and arithmetic, you know, get back to the basics. I mean, if I had it my way, I would take the computers away and use those part of the time and I'd go back to books.
There, there's so many things I've not even had an opportunity to sit down and prioritize. You know the, but the first thing is the pluses and deltas, because I think that you know the stakeholders need to know what's going on.
Where does the board hold themselves accountable? What do we think? You know you can't just go around and everybody agrees. And I spoke to the board president the other night and his big thing was, well, I want everybody to get along and I want, well, what happens when everybody gets along?
Then voices get lost in translation. You know, then everybody becomes comfortable and everybody's afraid to stand up for what's right and we, you know, as a board member, we have to be and I don't want to say man enough. I'm looking for a professional word here, but you have to be able to stand up for what's right for those students, those teachers and those parents.
RACHEL SCHNELLE - Yeah. Anything else you want to add?
DEREK GANDER - Ohh my goodness, I could sit here and talk for hours and hours, but then everybody would get bored. I don't know. I just, you know, right now I'm. I'm very, very fortunate to have the support that I have. I'm fortunate that the people that have donated the campaign and I've tried to make that very, very minimal. You know my campaign treasurer is an actual parent.
She actually taught for the district years and years ago. So I've been very transparent, you know, running my campaign. But the support that I'm getting is phenomenal. You know what people need to understand is you can't vote for someone because you like them. You have to vote for the best candidate.
I would urge people to literally go back to my previous tenure and I served with someone, actually I served with two of the candidates David Weaver and Lori Musser and I would encourage them to go back and look at previous board meetings and see that you know my love of the district is as strong as anybody in Joplin.
You know, I think that if they go back and look, they'll see that every vote that I made was, you know, to benefit, teachers benefit, teacher pay benefit, teacher benefits and then do everything that we possibly can to educate students. So you know, that's the big thing.
I would tell people, educate yourself about the candidates. You know that that's the biggest thing we see. He candidates getting on the school board because they have. Ohh well, I like this certain person and then you see them get on the board and I without naming names I could name names and you see the failure that's happening and it's happened in two years. What happens if these are the same board members?
Kind of hope that didn't come out wrong because I didn't. I didn't say no names, but you know, if you look at the votes and you see how those things went, you'll.
See that some other candidates are not right for the district. I'm a personal believer that if you've worked for the district, you are a principal in the district, a teacher, anything you should not be on the board because then you're your vote is always going to benefit just them and and students and parents are not gonna be taken into consideration and I think that's what I bring. Y
You know I'm so neutral. I just want what's best for the students.
Thing is, I would love to be able to hand my son and my daughter their diplomas.
Tuesday April 8 is election day. You can find your ballot, poll site and hours by clicking this link.
You can learn more about Gander’s campaign by visiting his Facebook page.
Copyright 2025 KRPS. To see more, visit Four States Public Radio.
