By Roger McKinney from the Columbia Daily Tribune 

Posted Jan 4, 2019 at 5:19 PMUpdated Jan 4, 2019 at 5:19 PM

Mr. Jay Atkins

Jay Atkins said he thinks his background in government and law will be a benefit if he’s elected to the Columbia Board of Education.

On Thursday Atkins, 45, became the fourth candidate to file for two open seats on the school board in the April 2 election. Longtime school board members Jim Whitt and Jan Mees have said they won’t run for re-election. Other candidates are Blake A. Willoughby, Della Streaty-Wilhoit and Brian Jones.

Atkins said he currently works as vice president of government affairs for AutoReturn, a San Franciso technology and management company. He works from his home in Columbia. He moved to Columbia in 2005 to attend the University of Missouri Law School and in 2008. His bachelor’s degree is from Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, now Missouri State University.

He and his wife have four children. Three of them are in Columbia Public Schools and a fourth will start kindergarten next year.

Atkins worked in the Missouri Attorney General’s office from 2008 to 2011 handling the cases of sexually violent criminals.

He was a legislative liaison in Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration, working for the Missouri Department of Revenue and the Department of Natural Resources. After leaving state employment in 2014, Atkins worked as general counsel and lobbyist for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In that job, he worked to override Nixon’s veto of a so-called Right-to-Work bill in 2015. He also pushed for reinstatement of caps on punitive damage awards in medical malpractice lawsuits.

He worked a lobbyist for the Husch Blacwell law firm before his current job. It has offices in Kansas City and St. Louis.

“My wife and I are invested in the process,” Atkins said, referring to their children. “We spend a lot of time in and around Columbia Public Schools. We just want to be a part of the process in a more meaningful way and to have some input in decisions.”

He said he decided to run for school board after working through an issue with Superintendent Peter Stiepleman related to the appropriateness of material related to gender identity at a middle school.

“It was a really enjoyable experience” working with Stiepleman, Atkins said. “It was a very good result that could have been a difficult situation.”

He said he thinks his work history can aid him if elected.

“I think my background and experience is a pretty good fit to help what the school board is doing,” Atkins said.

MU Doctoral Students Runs for CPS School Board

• BY BROOKE KNAPPENBERGER, EMILY NEVILS AND CLAIRE COLBY
 
• Jan 2, 2019 From the Columbia Missourian
• • 
    

Blake Willoughby

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Blake Willoughby

Blake Willoughby sees his young age — 24 — as an asset for his school board campaign. The MU doctoral student studying theater and performing arts filed to run for a position on the Columbia Board of Education on Dec. 18.

“I understand the environment that our high schoolers are growing up in, when it comes to cyberbullying, when it comes to the pressures of society and what our social norms are,” he said.

Willoughby, who earned his master’s degree at MU in 2018, serves as an associate director of MU’s Center of Applied Theatre and Research. He’s worked as a graduate teaching assistant for several courses in the theater department, and this experience partially inspired his decision to run for school board.

“As an instructor at the University of Missouri, I really do think that public education — at the higher-education level and the K-12 level — is really important, and it is something that I want to focus on in engaging with,” he said.

The school board position would not be Willoughby’s first experience in Columbia’s local government. Willoughby — who moved from Auburn, Alabama, two years ago — serves as vice chair for the city’s Substance Abuse Advisory Commission. He also serves as the MU student representative for the Public Transit Advisory Committee.

If elected, Willoughby wants to focus attention on listening to the district’s special-education teachers.

“It’s really not about what I think is best,” he said. “It’s about listening to what the teachers are saying is best and trying to aid in providing those things for them.”

A major tenet of Willoughby’s platform would be meeting with community members outside board meetings.

“By effectively engaging constantly and outside of the school board meetings, we create a relationship with our teachers and our parents and our students, which means that we can work toward a school system that meets their needs as best as possible,” he said.

Shelter Insurance Manager Files to Run For CPS Board

• BY BROOKE KNAPPENBERGER, EMILY NEVILS AND CLAIRE COLBY
 
• Jan 2, 2019
• From the Columbia Missourian

Brian Jones

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Brian Jones

Brian Jones, corporate manager of diversity and inclusion at Shelter Insurance in Columbia, said he decided to run because he wants to see the city continue to improve.

“I want to see this community continue to be a welcoming, warm and thriving community,” Jones said. “I believe the school system is the best place to start to work with kids and help to continue to build that mindset of being welcoming and open to everyone.”

Jones is also a basketball coach at Gentry Middle School and is involved with the Multicultural Achievement Committee Scholars program.

If elected, Jones hopes to be a voice for everyone and the school district during his term.

“It’s important to me to make sure that every student is represented and every student has a seat at the table,” Jones said.

Board Candidate Streaty-Wilhoit Shares Vision for the CPS Board

By Rudi Keller from the Columbia Daily Tribune 

Posted Dec 16, 2018 at 4:17 PM

Through the first week of filing for the Columbia Board of Education, there are only two candidates in the race, just enough to fill the seats being vacated by current board President Jan Mees and former President Jim Whitt.

Mrs. Della Streaty-Wilhoit

The first candidate on the ballot will be Della Streaty-Wilhoit, who retired a little over three years ago as director of science research for the National Park Service Great Rivers Midwest Region and visiting faculty at the Great Rivers Cooperative Ecosystems Unit at the University of Missouri.

Her goal if elected, Streaty-Wilhoit said in an interview last week, is to encourage more students, especially girls and minority students, to get into science and technology fields.

“We must continue to raise our bar of excellence and make sure that everyone understands that in order to be successful and find good jobs, we must train all of our students into those fields,” she said.

Streaty-Wilhoit and Brian Jones filed last Monday, the first day filing was open for the April 2 election. Filing also opened last Monday for one seat on the Boone Hospital Board of Trustees as well as for school board, city council and aldermen positions and other districts with non-partisan elections in April.

As of Friday, no candidate had filed for Boone Hospital trustee and 12-year incumbent and Chair Brian Neuner said last week he is undecided about another term.

Since retiring after 26 years working for federal resource agencies that also included the U.S. Forest Service, Streaty-Wilhoit said she has been looking for her next challenge.

“In all of that time I have been looking at where I could fit as my natural next step,” she said.

In 2014, she applied to be Missouri Commissioner of Education but did not make the list of five finalists of a search that resulted in the selection of Margie Vandeven.

“I was very, very surprised that I did not make the list of the final five,” she told St. Louis Public Radio. “I really thought my name would go forward because of all of the work I’ve done.”

Streaty-Wilhoit was born near Catron, in New Madrid County in the Missouri Bootheel. She received her undergraduate degree in personnel management at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana, and stayed there working for General Motors as a budget and cost analyst for 10 years.

She studied involvement of women and minorities for her MBA at Cardinal Stritch University and worked in Washington, D.C., for 12 years before returning to Missouri to begin a wildlife management program at Lincoln University for the forest service.

Streaty-Wilhoit received a doctorate from the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources at the University of Missouri when she was 50, she said.

“It is never too old to get an education,” she said. “I am a life learner.”

After reading that Whitt and Mees would not seek re-election, Streaty-Wilhoit decided to run. She thinks the board does a good job of communicating its goals and has done a good job guiding the district.

She understands the issues that will come with deciding attendance boundaries for middle schools when a new building opens in 2020. Middle schools feed into the three high schools.

“Some people have moved into a neighborhood based on where they want their kids to go to school,” Streaty-Wilhoit said. “The parents don’t want to lose that education. What we need to do is to communicate and let people know that whatever school your child goes to, they are going to get a quality education.”

2019 School Board Candidate filing begins

By Rudi Keller from the Columbia Daily Tribune

Posted Dec 11, 2018 at 5:47 PMUpdated Dec 11, 2018 at 5:48 PM

A coach at Gentry Middle School was among the first candidates to file Tuesday for the two open seats on the Columbia Board of Education.

Brian Jones, 37, manager of diversity and inclusion at Shelter Insurance and seventh-grade girls basketball coach at Gentry, said he’s running because he wants to contribute more to the district where his daughters are enrolled at Rock Bridge Elementary School.

“I’m not running out of any grievance,” Jones said. “This is such an important role and the district plays such an important role in the community, I just want to build on the things that have been done and make a positive impact long-term.”

Filing opened at 8 a.m. Tuesday and will continue through Jan. 15. Two long-time board incumbents, Jim Whitt and President Jan Mees, said last week that they will not seek new three-year terms on the board.

One other candidate, Ardella Streaty-Wilhoit, 65, also filed Tuesday. She could not be reached for comment on her decision to run.

Jones said he has been thinking about getting into politics in recent years and the school board is a good place to start.

“Between coaching and being a partner in MAC scholars, I’ve been working with some great students, some great teachers and some great administrators,” he said. “They have been really inspiring.”

Only one other candidate, Tyler Lero, has expressed interest in the race. Lero has an active campaign committee but said last week that he is not yet sure about running. Lero was fifth in a five-way race in April.

Candidate filing is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. District offices will not be open for filing during the week of Christmas or on Jan. 1.