Kansas State Board of Education hopefuls in Wichita area outline views on achievement, funding and parental role

Voters in the Wichita area will help choose members of the Kansas State Board of Education on Nov. 3, and candidates in two open-seat races have laid out their positions on student achievement, school funding, teacher shortages and parental oversight. The Eagle and KMUW put the same questions to each candidate.

Board members serve four-year terms and earn roughly $12,600 a year, based on $88.66 per day plus a $166 daily subsistence allowance on official meeting days. The board sets subject-area standards and oversees state assessment tests, but it does not choose specific curriculum, which is left to local school boards. School funding is decided by the Legislature and the governor. Those elected will take office in January.

District 7 covers 22 counties in central and south-central Kansas, including Butler, Harvey and Reno. Republican Dennis Hershberger of Hutchinson is not seeking reelection. Alana McWilliams, a Republican small business owner and marketing professional, and Ann Zimmerman, a Democrat who is an attorney-mediator and singer-songwriter, are on the ballot.

McWilliams, 40, said her views were shaped by IEP meetings for her own child and by service on a board at Hutchinson Correctional. She said Kansas has fallen from 5th to 36th in reading, and criticized the board's 2025 decision to let the state education department remove programs such as Take Flight and Alphabetic Phonics from the at-risk list. She called the Kansas Blueprint for Literacy a roadmap that must be fully implemented. On funding, she said the state already devotes 58% of its budget to education and that the question is whether the money goes to the right priorities, particularly early literacy. She also argued that teacher retention depends on more plan time, consequences for poor student behavior and support for the profession, and that districts should be transparent with parents.

Zimmerman, 69, is in her third term on the Salina school board and is a former elementary teacher who later earned a law degree at Harvard. She said the board should study higher-performing districts and states, citing a Kansas Association of School Boards finding that those states spend more on schools. She said Kansas schools are not fully funded, particularly for special education, and that her Salina district shifts $6 million from general education to cover those costs. She said fuller funding would allow higher teacher pay, and she criticized what she called dark-money groups that spread misinformation about public schools. She said most parents trust their children's teachers and that districts choose curriculum carefully.

District 9 covers a large part of southeastern and east-central Kansas, including portions of Butler, Chase, Marion and McPherson counties. Republican Jim Porter of Fredonia is not running for reelection. Destry Brown, a 64-year-old Republican and retired educator, is among the candidates. He said he spent 42 years as a teacher, principal and superintendent, 36 of them serving District 9 communities, and sits on the Fort Scott Community College board of trustees.

Brown said the board should work through the state education department to give teachers training on best practices and should support college-prep and technical programs. He said the current funding formula has brought progress over the past decade but that special education needs added advocacy. On staffing, he favors alternative routes to licensure paired with mentoring and apprenticeship programs, and a more consistent licensing system. He said parents should be able to see the curriculum and have input through committees or open meetings before it is adopted, and that he has kept partisan agendas out of his decisions by listening to stakeholders and analyzing school data.