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Bill Roush returns to Shelby School Board
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By LUCAS WRIGHT
Daily Globe Staff Reporter
 SHELBY — After a five-year hiatus, Bill Roush has made his way back to the Shelby School Board of Education table, using his 12 years of previous experience to guide his way into the fray of an ever-evolving public education system.
First elected to the Shelby School Board in 1994, Roush served several terms until 2006, when he decided to step down from the position. At 67, however, Roush decided to pick up the torch again, and last November was elected into another term, earning 2,154 votes — 32.6 percent of the nods.
In early January, Roush revisited his old stomping grounds, attending the first school board meeting of 2012. Roush said he was pleasantly surprised to see how the Board of Education meetings are run nowadays compared to his earlier tenure. He doesn’t feel residents have changed in the way they treat the public schools in the area.
“The City of Shelby and the people of Shelby have always supported the schools as long as they knew there was a need and we squeezed every nickel,” he said. “That has not changed.”
Roush admitted he plays the devil’s advocate sometimes at meetings, but only because he wants to make sure the right decisions are made. “I say what I think and do what I say,” Roush said. But he added that doesn’t mean he has to have his way all the time. “If somebody says, ‘Well, Bill, have you every thought about this? How about doing it this way?’ I’ll be the first to say, ‘You’re right. I was wrong.’ I’ll admit when I’m wrong,” Roush said. “I don’t know everything.”
Roush also noted in his opinion the school board is not there to micromanage the dealings of Superintendent Tim Tarvin and Treasurer Elizabeth Anatra. “The school board is there to do three things, hire the superintendent, a treasurer and set policy,” Roush said. “If you don’t think the treasurer is doing the right thing or giving you the right numbers, then you don’t try to do it yourself, you tell the treasurer, ‘You’re done’,” Roush said. “It’s the same thing with the superintendent.”
“There’s a chain of command and it should be followed,” he said. “What other business is there in this world, where five people can come in here and have virtually no experience and run a multi-million dollar system? You have to trust the people around you and trust the people that you hired....If you want to ask something of the superintendent and the treasurer, ask them. And more than likely they’ll have a reason.”
The new high school project is a big draw for Roush, he said. Although he hasn’t studied the plans of the new high school, he doesn’t expect to see extravagant use of taxpayers’ money by the superintendent and board, he said. The $750,000 technology grant too is very interesting to Roush.
“Although we were going to spend that type of money or close to it on technology, now that we’ve got that coming to us we can probably use that money somewhere else,” Roush speculated.
One of the toughest challenges facing the district is funding, or lack thereof, Roush pointed out. This could lead to problems down the line, he warned. “How do you go to the voters and go, ‘You know, we’re going to have to pass a levy here’?” he asked. But he said he believes the board will overcome those hurdles, just like the boards before them, adding “Shelby’s definitely on the right track.” |
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