Q&A

Q: Why are you running for school board?

To make Ozark schools even better. I believe that Education must be our top priority.  We must reset the focus of our school board to academics. We cannot be successful if we are trying to work on too many different areas.  Our focus needs to return to academics.  Yes, there are many needs, and we would be irresponsible and seem uncompassionate to not address those needs.  But if we want to do a great job educating our students, we need to be sure we focus on educating our students.  We let parents step up and do their jobs as parents. And we need to use the other community resources out there that are much more appropriately equipped to deal with social, medical, and behavioral issues than we are – then we focus on education.

We need to work hard to improve the education environment. Can we find an easy answer to any of these hard questions?  Not right away, but I specialize in connecting people and resources to work on solving hard problems, and I am convinced there are solutions available, if we’re willing to listen to the employees in the trenches. We must make Ozark a place where teachers want to work, and thus a place where families want to live and businesses want to build.  Teachers are currently being asked to do too much “double-duty” – giving up their planning periods to teach classes where there’s a vacancy, leaving class early and giving up time from the school day to help drive buses, leading classrooms with too many students.  These issues directly impact our ability to carry out our first mission - educating students. As a school board member, I would work with the administration to find solutions.

Another way to make Ozark schools a better place is by ensuring a commitment to integrity in our direction and our decisions. We must protect the values our community desires, and the only way to ensure integrity is with accountability, accountability to our state laws and to our board policies as well as accountability to our duty to our community as their voice.  How will they know we’re representing them as we’re elected to do?  They’ll need to be able to see and hear what is happening.  As a board member, I would continue working toward restoring public access to the school board.  We need advance public notice of all board meetings with accessible agenda items.  We need to return to the archived videos of the board meeting broadcasts for those times invested taxpayers have to miss a board meeting – something which many school districts in the state do (including a neighboring district to the north) and which the Attorney General’s office has stated is perfectly permissible to keep online in addition to the official written version of the minutes.  We need to make it easier for the public to address concerns at the board meeting – and to receive meaningful responses both during the meetings and in private communications.  That transparency and accountability to the community ensures that the direction of this District is truly aligning with its “bosses”, the District taxpayers.  As a board member, I will work together with other board members and the administration to increase our focus on education, transparency, and accountability.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a conservative candidate running for school board in Ozark.  I have lived in Ozark for 22 years and am thankful for such a wonderful community to raise my two sons.  I attend church here in Ozark and have been involved in many community events, including as a member of the Republican Central Committee.  I have long supported our community’s conservative values and believe it is the duty of any community's citizens to be actively involved in its governance -- to listen, to speak, to volunteer, to support, and also to encourage others to also be involved.  As a board member of the 7^th District Missouri Republican Assembly and a co-founder of the Christian County chapter, I have done all of those things to help elect conservative candidates and to preserve our community’s values.

I have spent the last 27 years teaching math, first at a high school in Springfield for 7 years, and then, when my boys were born, I spent the next 20 years focusing on my family and teaching math part-time at the college level and tutoring area math students. During my boys’ teen years, I co-founded and served on the Board of an international missions organization, Gospel for Haiti.  We lived abroad for months at a time in a very poor country, immersing ourselves in the culture, learning the language, embracing the community, and helping them with both physical needs and most importantly spiritual needs.  That multicultural experience helped broaden my understanding, compassion, resilience, and thankfulness.

Currently I teach classes at Evangel University and at the local Ozarks Community College campus and I tutor math students who are academically struggling and students who want to academically excel.

Q: What is something unique to you, skills or experience, that you would bring to the school board?

I believe my training in math and reasoning, and my aptitude for analyzing, researching, and directly handling obstacles are helpful leadership skills for any organization, but especially one with as many components as our school District. I also love to make connections between people, connecting them with resources or other people who can help them achieve a goal or meet a need.  I enjoy working with people, listening and communicating with them positively. Clearly, though, the most unique experience for me is my years spent in the classroom, working with students.  That passion for education will help me to connect and understand more easily what is needed in helping our teachers and staff as they nurture our students. I look forward to being a board member who will be a voice for the students, parents, teachers, and staff.

To that end, I am offering “Teacher Talks” on several upcoming dates for faculty and staff to communicate with me about areas they need help or have ideas for further improving the schools in Ozark. I’d like to hear from them about what they really love about their various role in helping our students reach their full potential and discover a love for learning, and I’d like to hear from them about ways we can better help them as they do that.  You can watch my Facebook page, Christina Tonsing for Ozark School District, or my website, www.ChristinaTonsing.com for information about those.  The only way I can truly know what is happening, how to help you, and celebrate with you is through communicating – and that means I need and want to hear your thoughts.

Q: What do you think the District is doing well and where do you think there could be improvements?

Our District has built a long-held reputation for our town of having fantastic schools, with students accomplishing incredible successes and teachers pouring into their lives.  In order to preserve that reputation, we need to be able to keep our quality teachers.  There is a massive teacher shortage in many districts, and Ozark has also experienced a high turnover rate. We do a great job attracting new teachers, as it’s been noted we already have a higher starting pay than the state requirement and than many neighboring schools. In fact, probably unlike many Districts in the state, we didn’t even have to worry about needing to raise our beginning teacher rates when news came that the state was considering raising the minimum starting pay rate or what to do when the state-funded one-year boost ends.

Now, does our salary schedule keep pace as they make their way up the steps of experience and across the columns of education? That might be something to examine more closely.  However, aside from teacher pay, I think one thing that will make the biggest difference for a District in retaining those hard-working teachers is to make the district a place they want to work.  People want to be part of an organization when they are valued and respected, when they are heard and their ideas considered – and promises made to them are kept.  That means there is a recognition of their expertise – and thus they have more autonomy and control to make decision about how to do what is needed in their classrooms.  Teachers don’t decide to go into education for the pay – and it’s certainly not for the hours, right? – but we are teachers because we love helping kids, and we work hard doing just that – many hours in the evenings and on the weekends -- to help kids discover a love for learning, something that will fuel them the rest of their lives and help them develop and grow to their full potential.  I’m convinced that as we ease the administrative burden from teachers, allowing them to focus on their passion for kids and exercise their expertise with more control in their classroom to impart knowledge and understanding to those kids, Ozark will be a place where teachers want to continue teaching.