Forty years is a long time to serve on a local school board. Ten elections and nearly 500 monthly meetings, not counting special meetings and all other obligations.
There are no official records of how long individual board members are in office, and multiple decades of service are not unheard of. But when KASB learned that Stan Reiss would be retiring from the Kismet-Plains USD 483 board after 40 years, we knew that was very rare and wanted to learn more about what it takes to achieve that kind of longevity in public service.
To find out, I drove from Topeka to Southwestern Heights High School and Junior High School, a well-kept complex 20 miles northeast of Liberal and 20 miles southwest of Meade. With around 600 students, USD 483, like many Kansas districts, was formed during school unification in the 1960s by two small districts that joined to keep from being absorbed by bigger districts on either side. They built a new consolidated high school out in the country between both. The new school board was carefully apportioned to have three members from the Kismet side of the new district and three members from the Plains side, with one at-large member.
Stan told me he was approached to run for that at-large seat in 1983 when the incumbent retired and has held the position ever since. He noted that he will have actually been in his position for more than 40 years – when he first ran, board members were elected in April of odd-numbered years and took office July 1.
I really wanted to know two things. First, WHY would someone spend 40 years in a high-stress, unpaid position where almost every important decision usually leaves at least one person unhappy? Second, HOW do you do that job that long without making enough people angry that you get voted out?
The answers from Stan, and from his superintendent Dan Frisby and board colleague Ron Eakes who joined us for part of the discussion, came down a couple of points—first, a love of students and a desire to support the educators responsible for their learning. Second, listen before you speak and seek common ground.
In another life, Stan might have had a 40-year career as a teacher in the district rather than on the school board. Coming from a farming family, he planned to become a teacher, majoring in physical education with a minor in biology at the University of Kansas. He mentioned two experiences that shaped his lifelong views. First, needing a job to support himself and his wife in college, he was hired as a custodian at Lawrence High School. “I didn’t really like the way some people kind of looked down on me because they saw me as a janitor,” he said. He also did student teaching at a couple of schools in Topeka, seeing challenges facing students and teachers in a high poverty urban school far different from his background in rural southwest Kansas.
Stan said those experiences made him more emphatic to the range of human conditions and that as a board member, he has tried to value everyone who works for the district, from administrators to custodians, cooks to bus drivers, and meet the needs of all students, whatever their background.
Looking for a job after college, he applied at his old school, among other places. He admitted to being somewhat nervous about how he might be perceived by teachers who had him as a student just a few years before. But he was welcomed as the first graduate of the new high school to return as a teacher. But within a few years, he had to leave teaching to take over running the family farm.
“A few years later, there was a guy I knew and respected on the board who was going to retire, and he asked me if I would be willing to run,” Stan remembers. “I told him I wasn’t sure because I had gone to that school, I had taught with those teachers and many were still there, and I was worried there might be some resentment. He said he thought I would do a good job because I was level-headed and thought things out. So, I decided to run.” He won the election and became the first graduate of the new unified district to serve on the board.
“Unified” school district: that’s what USD stands for, but often that isn’t a very accurate description. Since their creation by required consolidation, some districts have remained split geographically. Sixty years later, some areas are trying to break away from others. In some cases, districts are split between the board and administration on one side and teachers on the other over negotiations and related issues. Sometimes a district and its boards are divided over policy or politics.
In my conversations with Stan and others, it seemed that one of his real goals was to be a unifier in his district, although he seems too modest to admit that. First, as an at-large member, he represented both communities.
As a former employee of his own district and with experience in others, he tried to connect and balance the views of the staff and the community. “My philosophy is ‘Hire good people, then let them do their job,’” he said. But he also says the board is the voice of the community. “I tell our employees the BOE will always support you unless you put us in a position that we can’t.”
For most of his term on the board, Stan served on the team negotiating with teachers over salaries and working conditions. He worked to develop a salary schedule that paid teachers more the longer they stayed, based on the “25-year earning” amount. His goal was to build and reward an experienced staff. “If we can get them here, they stay,” he said. He also worked for competitive salaries for classified staff, like the custodians he once was.
As a school board member, he was elected president after a few years on the board and remained in that spot ever since. His colleague Ron Eakes said Stan’s leadership style has helped keep the board focused and unified. “Stan makes sure everything is discussed,” he said. “We don’t make decisions until everyone feels they've had their say. He is fair to everyone.”
Stan offered advice for dealing with controversial issues: look for compromise and a way that everyone can find something positive. “You need to let everyone feel they won something,” he said. “You take something that's really negative on the one side, and you try to blend it with something that was really positive, so the one person can give in a little bit and say, `Yeah, I can agree to that.’ It's hard.” Stan noted that as president for many years, he often couldn’t voice his own opinion because he was trying to reach agreement among many other opinions.
Stan had high praise for the educators, families and community members in his district, while noting it faces many of the same problems in other small districts: declining enrollment due to a shortage of jobs, housing and other services; families facing more challenges with both parents working or only one parent stretched thin; children struggling with mental health issues brought on by social media and other problems.
I asked Stan if he had any other advice for school board members. “I think potential board members need to understand the time involved and educate themselves through board training. That's something that I think we desperately need,” he said. “Sometimes people come on with a personal agenda, like, for example, wanting to build a new track or something like that. They need to understand how the budget works and that we might be unable to do everything we want.”
He remembered, “I went to a (KASB) board training session recently and I was obviously about the oldest one there, but a young man asked where you spend the most time as a board member. I said in executive session, because when personnel are involved, you need to make sure you handle that issue right, so it’s fair to everybody.”
After 40 years, Stan may not be dealing directly with those issues as a board member, but he’ll still hear about them. One of his sons was elected to his at-large seat on the board this fall and will take his seat in January. His daughter is a school librarian, and his daughter-in-law teaches math. His love of public education continues to be a family affair.
Congratulations to Stan Reiss for 40 years of leadership and service!
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