Today is election day in Southwest Missouri. Residents will vote on a myriad of issues - one of them being two seats on the Joplin School Board.
KRPS's Rachel Schnelle interviewed every candidate, including incumbent candidate, David Weaver.
Schnelle started off the interview by asking Weaver about his goals for his second term.
SCHNELLE: What are your campaign goals this time around?
WEAVER: I think our campaign goals would be to improve the quality of the work experience in Joplin schools, for our teachers, to give them the best working conditions, the best salaries and the best benefits, and another goal of ours would be to increase the access to early childhood education to help our younger students get adapted to school and to correct. Some of the issues that kids are young and much easier to fix and when they are in the later grades of school also keep fiscally responsible to keep watch on our finances to make sure that we are spending money response.
SCHNELLE: Whenever you mention improving the quality of teachers. How would you want to do that?
WEAVER: Well, I think one of the big things that we can do is to support our teachers in the classroom, you know, by making an enjoyable to come to work, to help them with discipline issues in their classrooms, to help them with even class sizes, just to be supportive and encouraging and appreciate their presence in our buildings and be supportive.
SCHNELE: What would you want to do if you were elected again?
WEAVER: If I were elected again, I'd like to continue the improvement of our early childhood education. We just passed a debt free $9 million improvement to three of our elementary schools and as part of that, we're adding a four-year-old classroom. We're looking at doing that to other buildings and increasing the access to early childhood. The other thing is that we're coming into a pretty difficult financial environment, state funding. Is expected to decrease over the next several years and so resources will be scarcer and the ability to manage funds will be important. I have a degree in mind, teaching and accounting and finance. And so I am uniquely qualified to be in a position to make good decisions on spending money and saving resources.
SCHNELLE: I'm wondering what your success has been and then what has been what you would call your mistakes as an incumbent.
WEAVER: I think our successes well; we've had a balanced budget each of the years in my class. And my term service, we finished the Dover Hill Elementary School. That is probably one of our greatest accomplishments. I was involved in every aspect of that from the Facilities Committee to the financing of it to watching the construction. So that's been one of our greatest accomplishments. We have not taken on any new debt. Our test scores are up. And our buses just received a 100% safety rating. And we have improved safety at our schools. We've improved safety for our students and also, I think our teacher salaries are now the 4th best in the Southwest region and our benefits are the best in the area from what I understand. So very, very appreciative of it.
SCHNELLE: What do you like about being on the school board in Joplin?
WEAVER: I think the ability to see what our teachers are doing in the classroom, to see our children succeeding, to see the smiles on their face when they accomplish things, the most reward. Meeting time of each year is coming up here in about four or five more weeks. High school graduation to look across those people that many of them started in our schools as kindergarteners, and to see the excitement to see the opportunities that lie ahead for them and to see our faculty sitting there with us on the stage and just knowing how much effort they put into them, not just our high school faculty. But in middle school and elementary, I think it's just been a great joy to see the success of our students and to see the hard work of our teachers and their effectiveness.
To find more information about your ballot, poll sites and hours, visit this link.
You can learn more about Weaver's campaign by checking out his Facebook page.
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