Mees cites experience with district

Jan Mees had been retired only six months when she decided to run for the Columbia School Board.

“I kept thinking that I need to be working,” said Mees, who retired in June 2006 from Hickman High School, where she ran the media center. “It’s hard to break that habit.”

But wouldn’t she rather spend her retirement doing something more leisurely than grappling with district budgets and policies and a taxpaying, opinionated public?

“You mean, like on the golf course or something?” Mees laughed before answering.

“I’m still fairly young,” Mees, 58, said. “I have a lot of energy and effort that I want to give back to the community, and I feel that I can be a real contributing member of the board.”

Mees — who is running against incumbent Karla DeSpain and William Woods education professor Michael Tan for two seats in the April 3 election — has already logged 21 years in the Columbia Public School District. She first got involved when she began volunteering in 1981 at Fairview Elementary School, when one of her two sons was a student there and she was a stay-at-home mom. That led to a support staff job from 1985 to 1989.

“The whole career thing was kind of serendipitous,” Mees said. “It just evolved one step after another.”

Her job at Fairview, for example, led her to earn a master’s degree in library science from MU in 1993. After she left Fairview, Mees worked until 1997 as an elementary media specialist at Cedar Ridge, Grant and Russell Boulevard elementary schools. She spent a year as a media specialist at Lange Middle School before joining Hickman High School as the media center director and a media specialist.

Michelle Gadbois, a school board member who taught at Hickman while Mees was there, said Mees was efficient at running her department of two media specialists and four support staff. “Jan doesn’t mess around,” Gadbois said. “One time I sent a student to the media center without following protocol. I didn’t do it again because Jan didn’t let me. When she needs to stand her ground, she stands her ground. On the flip side, I’ve never seen a more compassionate person who always helped me.”

Janet Tilley, who has known Mees since the 1980s when Tilley taught Mees’ older son, Jeff, at West Junior High School, said Mees is levelheaded and looks at all sides of the issues.

“She’s very committed to kids and to this district,” said Tilley, a member of the Citizens for Jan Mees Committee and assistant to the district’s language arts coordinator. “And she’s also extremely committed to this community.”

Mees has lived in Columbia since 1973, when she moved to the city with her husband, Bill. Her volunteer activities include serving as a registered adult leader for the Boy Scouts of America, on the PTAs at Fairview Elementary and West and Jefferson junior high schools, as assistant club leader and project leader for 4-H and, more recently, on committees at Missouri United Methodist Church.

She also was president of the Columbia Community Teachers Association from 2001 to 2004, which put her nose to nose with teacher concerns. Before that, she was an executive board representative for the group — meaning she attended monthly board meetings and brought issues to the association regarding legislative issues that affected the education profession — for six years.

Not that Mees’s lengthy career has gone without recognition. The Missouri Association of School Librarians awarded its 2004 Bright Idea Award to Mees for the establishment of the ongoing Kewpie Alumni Authors Project. The teachers association named Mees the Outstanding Elementary Educator for 1995-1996 and the Outstanding Secondary Educator for 2005-2006. She also received the Columbia district’s Ray Lewis Award for Outstanding Educator in a Specialized Area in 1994.

After making her campaign official in December, Mees visited all of Columbia’s 29 schools. She came away most impressed with the high level of engagement in the classrooms. “It was phenomenal; the kids aren’t all sitting in rows,” Mees said. “There’s just such interaction and energy, but there’s a control that the kids have and the teacher has.”

Not everything Mees observed at the schools was positive; she said a few principals showed her facility concerns for their buildings. Mees favors approving a $60 million bond issue, which would be used to fund new construction and repair school facilities.

“Because of the growth the community is experiencing, we would be shortchanging our kids if we don’t have adequate educational facilities,” Mees said.

It’s one of four focus areas in her campaign. “I don’t want to say that I’m going in with an agenda, but what’s most important to me is student achievement, appropriate compensation for teachers and staff, equity of resources and good facilities for safe learning environments,” Mees said.

One thing that distinguishes candidate Mees from candidate Tan is merit pay. Tan supports merit pay; Mees does not. “I think whatever pay increase happens, needs to affect everybody that works in the system,” Mees said. Candidate DeSpain favors it but sees difficulties, perhaps prohibitive, in quantifying the enrichment teachers provide.

As for how math is being taught in the Columbia public schools — a topic around which public forums are being held — Mees thinks the nontraditional curriculum known as integrated math is a creative approach but there isn’t enough longitudinal data to see how well it’s working.

“I think the results are not finalized for anybody at this point and I think because parents are concerned, the district should listen and make well-informed decisions,” Mees said. “However, if that doesn’t happen and parents are still in distress over the issue, then an alternative program is to be developed or offered.”

Mees said she thinks the voters have three good choices in DeSpain, Tan and herself. “I think what separates me is that I’ve lived the school system since 1980 as a parent or as a volunteer or as a support staff person or in my jobs at elementary schools, middle schools and high schools,” she said.

Mees also said she has the personality for the position.

“I’m a pretty Type A, organized person,” she said. “I have lists everywhere and I don’t often let things slip and if I do, it is very rare, I must say.”