Brian Higginbotham, board candidate

If you are elected to be on the school board, what will your top priority be?

If I am elected to the school board, I have a long list of initiatives I intend on introducing; all with equal importance toward the overall growth of our district. However, if I picked my top priority, it would have to be to create initiatives to improve communication and idea sharing with parents and students. I would like to see more family participation in district decision making processes. I feel very strongly that we have some incredibly intelligent minds amongst our student body and district parents, that are underutilized and untapped. I would like to facilitate a platform that encourages and promotes idea sharing and communication amongst this incredible resource. Our students and their families are on the front lines and are the real subject matter experts in how our school district operates. I am fanatical about customer experience, and I feel that if we can open communication and idea sharing with our front lines resources, that we can open doors to improvements and create efficiencies that haven’t been addressed or considered to date.

Where do you see our district in five years? Ten years?

I see our district growing and improving dramatically over the next five and ten years. With the right focus on facilitating engagement and communication with our students, parents, educators, staff and contractors, we can find areas we can positively impact. By thoroughly auditing existing expenditures in a real and public way, we can find opportunities to improve our fiscal standing. By focusing on process improvement, we can seek out ways to improve fundraising, improve educational output, improve student and family engagement and participation, improve relationships with contractors, improve relations with teaching staff, improve availability and participation with extracurricular activities, and ultimately strengthen our overall district as a whole. I see the district leading the way and setting the bar for excellence in education for all students of all abilities.

In your opinion, what is the board’s most important responsibility?

In my opinion, the school board’s most important responsibility is providing a voice and solid leadership to ensure all students, parents, educators, staff and contractors have all necessary resources and support so they can perform to the very best of their ability in their individual roles. Our people are our most valuable resource and asset as a district. It is incredibly important that the district board facilitates and promotes initiatives designed to allow our greatest resources to reach their fullest potential. This means, providing responsible budget oversight and management, responsible and effective engagement and communication, solid auditing and process improvement, proactive leadership, and follow through with accountable action. Ultimately, the board serves the people, and the focus needs to be oriented towards creating effective, efficient and sustainable change for the betterment of all in our great district.

What measures the success of a school and its students?

To me, success is measured by engagement. I feel very strongly that our education system is the heartbeat of our community. By providing initiatives and programs that encourage and facilitate engagement of our student body and their families, we will be able to take a pulse on the strength of our educational economy. Engaged, happy, productive, and supported students equal successful students. Successful students equal a successful school and district. Improving student engagement will allow the district to grow in so many ways. This proactive approach to improving our student success will ultimately improve our district’s overall standing in many measurable ways.

Describe a controversial decision you made that you feel was for the better.

I lead US operations for an international autism charitable organization called Fighting for Autism. We promote awareness, acceptance, advocacy and support programs and initiatives for our community through the competitive combat sports industry that includes MMA, boxing, muay thai, jiu-jitsu, professional wrestling, etc. In 2014, we were made aware of an incident in Florida where two adaptive athletes who happened to have down syndrome and cerebral palsy diagnosis who were denied their right to compete in a sanctioned MMA bout, simply due to their diagnosis. They were walking to the cage to compete, after years of training and preparation, when the State of Florida issued a Cease and Desist, barring them from competing. This was devastating to these fighters. Following the incident, these athletes petitioned every State Athletic Commission for their right to fight, and every commission turned them away. They then asked Fighting for Autism to help advocate for them. I single-handedly created an action plan to address the issue and advocate for their safe inclusion in the sport. This proved to be a very controversial topic, and our efforts earned the attention of many media outlets around the world. After four months of advocating for the safe inclusion of adaptive athletes in sanctioned mixed martial arts competition, and developing safety clearance procedures and modifications of rule sets, I was finally successful in getting the fight sanctioned and approved here in Missouri. In November of 2014, we made history with the first sanctioned adaptive MMA bout in the history of the sport, which has been broadcasted globally through a variety of documentaries and publications. My message to the world was very simple – that a diagnosis does not define the individual, and that with the right oversight and procedural development and execution, that any athlete should be and can be safely included in any sport. We hoped to encourage parents of children with various conditions, to get their children active and living life to the fullest, and to not allow the stigmas of their diagnosis to define their quality of life. We fought for inclusion and equality, and we got the job done, despite the controversial nature of the subject.

I fully intend on providing the same passion for our school district and squaring up with tough decisions with the goal of creating lasting, efficient and effective change for the betterment of everyone.