Larry Jagours filled the Place 1 spot held by Maria McKinzie. Previously, Jagours was a substitute teacher for both special and general education. He has worked in education for 29 years.
Chad Green replaced Kathi Livezey in Place 3. Green is the CEO of Five Star Innovation, a robotics and coding competition that he co-founded with Shane Haggerty in El Paso. He has worked in education for about 25 years.
Harvey Oaxaca beat out three opponents for Place 7, an at-large seat. The El Paso native taught in addition to coaching football, track and powerlifting around the state for 17 years before settling into a 23-year stint in administration in MISD.
What are you looking forward to most while serving on the board?
Larry Jagours: I’m wanting [the] McKinney school district to be the premier school district in Collin County, if not in the state. In the era that we’re in now, we should be more hands-on, more learned and more taught in regard to science, technology. We hear the word STEM, but we need to add the A into STEM to make it STEAM: science, technology, engineering, arts and math. The students should be more challenged, but they should be challenged in all of those aspects, in a fun type of way, so that they will be productive once they finish high school.
Chad Green: The thing I’m most looking forward to is meeting the kids and helping progress the school district so we’re really bringing a meaningful education that ends in a career for the kids. I don’t want children to graduate [from] McKinney High and have to go work for McDonald’s. I want them to have an enormous amount of options open to them, because they deserve that type of opportunity in their life. If we can increase scholarships by 10%, then I’m going to be very, very happy.
Harvey Oaxaca: Coming out of the pandemic, we’re going to be making some really tough decisions. What does a new normal look like? We’re going to be able to establish that. I am looking forward to being a part of that and working collaboratively with the administration, with [Superintendent] Dr. [Rick] McDaniel. His administrative team has been doing an awesome job, so I’m excited about getting to work with them.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the district in the next couple of years?
Larry Jagours: Growth, and the challenge of the teachers leaving to go to other districts. These last few years, I’ve really seen the exodus of individuals leaving, going to other districts for better opportunities and better wages. I know I only have one vote, but it’s my intention to bring these things to the light, and hopefully other individuals on the board and throughout administration really see what’s going on, so that we can retain our teachers, and we can recruit teachers to come here.
Chad Green: The biggest challenge right now is the learning loss due to COVID, and anyway I can help with that, I’m really happy to do. I’d like to bring a challenge to the community and say we need your help with our kids. We need people to come in and help work with the kids, be an example to the kids, get them involved, help them find a vision. Vision doesn’t usually happen when kids are at home playing computer games. That’s fun and everything, but we need to help them find a deeper area of fun, and a lot of that is how do you program the game? Or how do you go do something else that has to do with engineering? One of the things that Five Star Innovation took on early on was the lack of young ladies that are involved in engineering programs. We need to find ways to engage young ladies in STEM activities early on, so we’re making a strong effort to do that. I’d like to see us as a school district do that as well.
Harvey Oaxaca: The last 18 months have been very tough on both our teachers and our students. We had a lot of students that flourished, but unfortunately, we have a lot of students who are falling behind, so one of the things that needs to be our focus is figuring out how we can provide the resources to help support those students who are behind.
