Blake Willoughby
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.
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