Fay says God essential in school equation

With more than 30 years in Columbia and four terms on the Columbia School Board, Elton Fay sees his community involvement as a reason to elect him to a fifth term.

Fay grew up in nearby Centralia, graduating from Centralia High School before heading to William Jewell College in Liberty and MU Law School.

His first job in Columbia, 36 years ago, was as a school bus driver for the Columbia district. For the past 31 years, Fay has worked as an attorney for Grimes & Fay.

While Fay served on the board, two of his three children have graduated from Hickman High School. His youngest daughter, Whitney, graduates this spring.

When asked about his life in the community, Fay can rattle off a long list of groups and organizations in which he actively participates. He has acted as a church youth sponsor at Forum Boulevard Christian Church for more than 20 years and served on the Show-Me Christian Youth Home Board for 15 years, currently serving as chairman. The nonprofit youth home provides housing and support for 86 children with backgrounds of abuse, neglect and abandonment.

“He is an incredible man,” said Karen Culler, executive director of Show-Me Christian Youth Home. “He, sacrificially, gives so much of his time and energies.”

Culler said that Fay is always available to her in his position as chairman of the board and that his dedication to the program is phenomenal.

“Truly, his efforts know no limits,” Culler said.

Fay has seen more public scrutiny after a remark he made last summer in a KOMU/Channel 8 report: “If the teacher is teaching macro evolution as a fact, rather than a theory, then they need to ask them some of the difficult questions that evolutionists cannot answer,” Fay said in the report. “I think those are the questions that kids ought to be taught, that there is no real explanation, other than God.”

The issue was raised at a public forum March 8, when Fay was asked how he could justify this “unconstitutional” use of God in schools.

“God has been around a lot longer than I have been or you have been,” Fay responded. He concluded his answer by saying, “You want to have a very unsuccessful school? Take God out of that school and see where it goes.”

A day later, on March 9, the school board candidates attended a Boone County Democrats Muleskinners Club luncheon to introduce themselves and answer questions from the crowd. There, Fay was asked how he would handle the teaching of evolution, creationism and intelligent design in the schools.

“I don’t want our public schools without God,” Fay at first responded.

Fay went on to say that schools are not a place to advocate religion nor are they a place to exclude religion and that he believes Columbia’s teachers are doing a good job of this. Fay said he thinks students should be allowed to make their own decisions when presented with information.

The topic did not come up at a March 21 forum organized by the NAACP.

Fay’s community involvement also includes membership in the Parent Teacher Student Association and in county, state and national bar associations. And for more than 40 years, he has volunteered as a leader for Missouri Boys State, an American Legion program in which high school juniors learn about representative government by creating one.

Fay said he has made some of his best friends through his experiences with Missouri Boys State over the years. Fay’s wife, Nancy, said that when old Missouri Boys State friends pass through Columbia, she sometimes gets a call that they will have guests for the night.

The Fay family also hosts exchange and other foreign students. They most recently hosted a pair of Haitian students, who are friends of the Fays studying at Kentucky Christian College, when they needed a place to stay for the winter holidays.

“A lot of these things he signs up for and then tells me after,” Nancy Fay said. That’s what happened when Fay ran for school board the first time, when their youngest was in kindergarten. Fay signed up then came home and told his wife.

“But it’s always OK,” she said.

ANSWERS TO THREE QUESTIONS

Q: District records show there is a significant achievement gap between white and black students. What would you do to fix this?

A: Our district has low achieving white and black students. The key factor to most students not achieving is due to numerous factors, including their socioeconomic background, their parents’ involvement and the support they receive prior to entering school, i.e. pre-school. The district is piloting a project at West Boulevard Elementary, and I support attempting new ways to close the achievement gap for all students, whether they are minority or white students, who do not achieve at level.

Q: What would you do to address the district’s dropout rate, which is above the state average?

A: We need to continue to provide opportunities for students to connect during their high school experience so that they are not tempted to quit prior to earning their diploma. The taxpayers provide the opportunity to graduate. However, much of the dropout rate has to do with factors that are beyond the school district’s ability to control. Readily available jobs and individual choices made by students are the biggest factors in the dropout rate for most students.

Q: How do you plan to ensure quality education in the face of declining state funding and declining district reserves?

A: I will continue to request that we maximize our resources by cutting areas of our budget that are less effective than others so that we deliver a quality educational experience for our students. The spend-down of the district reserves during this level state funding era is something that will take careful budget planning to make sure that we do not spend too much of the reserves and that we make the best use of our tax dollars before ever considering asking our local voters for additional resources.