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Seven candidates are running for three seats on the Johnston School Board. Two members are running for re-election.
School board members serve for four years. Board President Justin Allen and Vice President Jeanie Kerber are running for re-election, Steven Hopper is not.
Johnston residents will vote for their district representatives Nov. 2.
Care strongly about a particular topic? Skip to it here:
Editor’s note: Candidates’ responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Who’s running for the Johnston School Board?
Tiara Mays
Age: 32
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Des Moines, Iowa
Where they currently live: Johnston, Iowa
Past political experience: N/A
Derek Tidball
Age: 43
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Des Moines, Iowa
Where they currently live: Urbandale, Iowa
Past political experience: Candidate for Iowa House of Representatives, 2016; Candidate for United States House of Representatives, 2008.
Jeanie Kerber
Age: 49
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Fort Dodge, Iowa
Where they currently live: Johnston, Iowa
Past political experience: Johnston Community School Board, 2017-present
Deb Davis
Age: 57
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Carroll, Iowa
Where they currently live: Johnston, Iowa
Past political experience: Assisted in 2020 Iowa House candidate Eddie Andrews’ campaign.
Clint Evans
Age: 52
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Marion, Iowa
Where they currently live: Urbandale, Iowa
Past political experience: N/A
Justin Allen
Age: 47
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Johnston, Iowa
Where they currently live: Johnston, Iowa
Past political experience: Johnston Community School Board, 2017-present.
Lya Williams
Age: 45
Office sought: Johnston Community School Board
Where they grew up: Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Where they currently live: Johnston, Iowa
Past political experience: N/A
Tiara Mays
I do support mask mandates in our school district. The CDC has provided suggested guidelines for school districts to follow. Their recommendations are based on scientific research and data. A primary role of any school board is to ensure the safety of its students. Mandating the wearing of masks for all students, teachers and staff is the bare minimum effort we can provide to our students during a global pandemic.
Derek Tidball
I do not support a mask mandate in our school district and feel those decisions should be left to the parent. We should hear all voices on the subject; to include teachers, medical and administration, but parents are the primary stakeholders in our schools and should have the largest influence on these matters. There are a lot of parents who feel these decisions were made before the board convened and that their voices weren’t truly considered.
Jeanie Kerber
I support masks. I, more specifically, support reasonable and responsible masking. Universal masking is a blanket policy that does not take into account individual specific medical, mental health and situational experiences that people encounter that could cause unintended consequences that outweigh other risks associated to masking.
More:Johnston’s school board narrowly votes to mandate masks in classrooms, starting Thursday
Deb Davis
I do not support a universal mask mandate in our school district and I believe parents should have the final decision when it comes to masking their children.
Clint Evans
I do not support a universal mask mandate. It is a choice that should be left for parents and staff to make for themselves. The district’s responsibility is to keep all informed with the most up-to-date information regarding all health concerns at the school, not just COVID-19, which I feel they are currently performing well.
Justin Allen
The school board has a duty to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for all students, including those with health issues or special needs. I rely on the expertise of public health officials and doctors for guidance on how to protect students and staff in our buildings. If the health conditions require masking to provide a safe environment, then I support following CDC guidelines requiring masks. School boards also have a duty to protect the district from liability. When a federal judge issues an order that masks are required to comply with federal law, I believe the district should comply.
Lya Williams
Yes, because research has shown that masks slow the spread of COVID. This is helpful for the health of not just members of the school community, but the community at large. Schools have an important role in health equity, and ensuring all school members have access to a safe learning environment is necessary.
Tiara Mays
My platform calls for parental empowerment, which I believe is much different than “control.” As parents, we can not control every operation and policy that is created within our school district. Administrators, teachers and staff are experts in these matters and have far better insight of the inner workings within our district. We must place some trust in their judgment to always keep our children first in mind when they are making decisions.
It is the job of the school board and administrators to implement policies that meet the needs of the community overall. But for every policy implemented, there have to be contingency plans created to meet the needs for individuals that may fall outside the primary framework.
Derek Tidball
Parents are the primary stakeholder in a child’s education. I believe the parent and the lessons provided under their care are the primary source for self-worth, ethical, moral and faith-based development in the child. The lens through which a child views life is sharpened at school with the help of teachers, but the responsibility for the foundational beliefs and core person development are within parental rights. Parents do not co-parent with the school. Parents and schools have assigned responsibilities and roles and we need to ensure those boundaries are maintained.
Jeanie Kerber
Parental control, from my perspective, on academics is that parents can choose which school system — private, public or home school — they choose to enroll their child. Parental control also sits with the expectations that parents place on their student’s behavior while they are attending an educational setting. The expectations they have for their child at home to meet academic assignments regardless of mandates is what parents have most control over. It is important for family units to identify how to create intrinsic motivation and direction from their child so that student knows the difference between expectations of the attending school and home.
Deb Davis
Parental control is the power of parents to make all the important decisions for their individual children’s lives. When parents are heard, both the community and the individual can flourish.
Clint Evans
Parental control is just that — exercising our rights and responsibilities as a parent. The current frustration I am hearing is that parents don’t feel they have a voice in decisions affecting their student’s best interests. Parents should be provided with a clear understanding of curriculum content and health concerns so they have the information they need to decide how best to proceed. They may choose to exclude their student from the curriculum or look for alternatives. Parents would also have the basis for discussing the curriculum with their child to help them understand where it aligns or conflicts with the worldview they are instilling in the home. If a majority of parents have a similar concern then it becomes a community interest to be addressed by the administration and/or board.
Justin Allen
Handing your child over to a school district to educate and nurture is a difficult thing for any parent to do. It requires a great amount of trust that the district has your child’s best interests in mind and will provide the education you expect. The district must earn that trust from our parents, which starts with communication and transparency. Parental control is being part of the conversation with teachers and having a voice. We must listen to the concerns of our families and work for common ground when possible. When that trust is earned, our teachers are free to teach, and we have a proven record of excellent, well-trained professional staff in our district who care deeply for their students.
Lya Williams
Parent control means that I have the ultimate say and decision-making for my child and no other authority rules over this mindset. While public education is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the need for a well-educated population was recognized by many early American leaders. The public school system was created to serve the best needs of the society as a whole, not the particular demands of an individual parent. A community includes members with a variety of needs, and the response to those needs should be equitable. When one struggles, it means we all are struggling. My passion is for us all to work together to move forward.
Tiara Mays
The most important way to promote diversity and inclusion in the Johnston Community School District is to have representation in positions of leadership. Starting with DE&I directors is a great start, but that must trickle down to teachers, staff and other administrators. The promoting of diversity and inclusion must be a constant and conscious effort. We must continue working on this when the cameras are turned off and it is no longer a trending topic. Intentionally making room at the table to include as many diverse decision-makers will produce the most productive results for our district.
Derek Tidball
Absolutely all children who attend Johnston schools should be enabled to reach their full potential.
We should teach American history honestly, both good and bad. We should address any instances of racism that take place in our schools with an aggressive stance. We have 74 languages spoken in our district and differing cultures and their influence in our country is to be embraced and celebrated.
What I do not feel is appropriate is the drift toward assigning blame, character traits or a message that universal life experiences are shared by children in our schools due to skin color. We should develop and enable student excellence based on those factors, not on preconceived notions of experiences or abilities that we assign based on something as baseless as skin color.
Jeanie Kerber
The appropriate way to promote diversity and inclusion is to celebrate our unique experiences and situations and educate each other. We need to be open to listening to students and what makes them feel included. We also need to provide diverse materials and recognize the changing demographics of our student population and community.
Deb Davis
I believe each child should be given opportunities to thrive in our schools, based on their own individual needs and unique characteristics. Schools should be a place to empower students to follow their passions and impact the world, regardless of what color, race, gender, ethnicity or religion they are. Bullying must not be tolerated in our schools, discrimination must not be allowed and students must be held accountable for their actions.
Clint Evans
Every student in our district should be valued as an individual and feel welcome in the schools and in our community. My children were taught the six pillars of character — trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. It was effective and reflected in the diversity of their friends. These traits were expected of all students and recognized as a measurement for behavior. Respect all, be fair to all, care for all. Teachers, staff and peers should be encouraged to recognize these traits being demonstrated, and likewise be empowered to call out each other for falling short, with the goal of understanding and appreciating our differences.
Justin Allen
During my first term on the board, we made equity and inclusion a priority. We updated our strategic plan to include a focus on equity with specific goals and metrics to guide our progress. We created and filled the new position of Director of Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, and we have begun an equity audit to identify areas of need and ways to improve. We must promote these efforts in the classrooms, hallways and offices with the appropriate curriculum and training. Every decision the board faces should be viewed through the equity lens. These are difficult conversations and hard problems, but nothing improves if you don’t bring your faults to light. The best way to promote diversity and inclusion efforts is to recognize you’ve made mistakes in the past. Johnston is making progress, but still has work to do. I look forward to continuing this work on the school board.
Lya Williams
It is important to have a diverse and inclusive curriculum. When we celebrate many cultures, and especially the multitude of communities that make up the Johnston Community School District, our students feel more included.
When my son started kindergarten in the district, I wondered why he was not coming home to discuss more about Black history. I continued to ask questions and eventually partnered with another parent to put together a celebrating diversity program that would be a part of student and staff teams referred to as Dragon Teams. While some of the program was placed on hold due to COVID restrictions, our school is still implementing an inclusive Color the Leader in Me that uses crayons of all skin tones. The more we can start educating our children on diversity and inclusion as a basic foundation for learning, the more all students can feel included in the district.
Tiara Mays
Johnston is a great district, overall. The data supports how well we are performing overall. However, when you dig deeper into that same data, the Black student population is not performing proficiently. 50% of the Black students in our district are not meeting reading and math benchmark quotas. That is 16% LESS than the 2nd lowest scoring student population. This is a clear achievement gap that needs to be addressed in our district. The first way to help close this gap is to offer families access to proper assessment and diagnosis for their students. We cannot continue to create Individual Education Plans for students with zero awareness of what is causing the students’ academic struggles.
Derek Tidball
There are multiple groups I hear about on doorsteps. We have IEP students that aren’t being served because the resources don’t exist at the school they are attending and parents are being hurt, financially, to ensure their child is receiving their best education possible. This isn’t a unique occurrence. We should ensure that children with IEPs have the support they need at the school they attend.
Another group I hear of most often when door-knocking is parents of children who are in the “middle,” academically. Their children are excelling enough that they don’t receive supportive attention, but are outside the upper tier of academics to access more challenging programs. They would like a stronger academic focus in class for their children. I would look forward to working alongside teachers and members of the community to provide a strong academic-focused curriculum.
Jeanie Kerber
Data should support decisions on which student groups that need the most academic help. Any student that is falling behind grade level is a primary population that we need to focus on. We need to focus on students who are struggling socially and emotionally, as this is a key factor to academic success. The district can and does help these students with additional instruction in the summer and there is time that students get small group or 1:1 support to help them meet grade-level standards. Those students who are struggling with social-emotional issues, we have counselors assigned to each building as well as Student Assistance Programs to provide additional help. Teachers are a key factor in both academic and social-emotional support. We need to be sure that we are supporting our teachers and providing them the time and resources they need to help our students.
Deb Davis
I believe the student group most in need will vary by school building and age group. I think teachers should be given resources to help those most in need in their classroom. Teachers can more easily recognize and react to the needs of their students and the district should give them the resources to do so.
More:As Iowa’s urban and suburban areas continue to grow, new high schools take on a college-like feel
Clint Evans
I trust our educators to understand and address the needs of the academic level they are responsible for. All grade levels were forced to work through challenges last year dealing with at-home or hybrid teaching which affected students differently depending on age and ability. Those students that were identified at-risk prior to COVID are likely on an IEP, which provides a more structured model for evaluation and influence. Students that aren’t on an IEP, or part of an ELP program may have fallen behind so the district should listen to the educators that are most aware of progress or risk. Camp Dragon was a great example of providing additional teaching opportunities this summer. We may need to consider offering similar targeted programs, potentially after school or at KTC to keep kids caught up.
Justin Allen
I can’t identify one student group that needs the “most academic help.” Every student in Johnston should receive support for whatever learning path they take. The emphasis should be on the type of help they receive, not the amount. Our highest achieving students and our special education students may both need a lot of help to obtain their goals, but the services are quite different. Every student should receive the necessary amount and type of help they need to succeed. Our district mission is for “all students to graduate as confident learners with the character, knowledge, and skills to excel in any endeavor they pursue.” We allocate help so all students can fulfill our mission.
Lya Williams
It is difficult to identify a single student group as most deserving of additional help. The needs of the individual student vary and may be intersectional. All students need help, students in advanced classes as well as students in special education. All students should be provided with the opportunity to work with a tutor. The district should have resources in place to make it available to all students.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/10/21/where-johnston-school-board-candidates-stand-masks-race-diversity-inclusion-covid-education/6048166001/