An inside look at the board president

Before enlisting as a Sooner with the University of Oklahoma in 1983, history professor Dr. Dan Snell was a well-traveled educator. He taught at the Universities of Washington and Michigan, and Connecticut, Barnard and Gustavus Adolphus Colleges, had a post-doc at the City University of New York and a Fulbright to the National Museum in Aleppo, Syria. Over the years he has established roots in Norman with his wife, Dr. Katie Barwick-Snell, Assistant Professor of Human Relations at OU, and children James, 17, and Abby, 15. For the last nine years, the good doctor has served on the Norman Public Schools Board of Education. The Transcript recently caught up with Snell, 59, and asked him about the community and education and how the two work together.



NT ??You are the current school board president. How long have you served on the board and what attracted you to run for the office?

I have served on the board nine years, first elected in 1997. I was asked to run for office by people from my district of central Norman because Tom Clote was not running for re-election.

NT ??What are some of the major accomplishments or moments you are proud of during your time on the board?

Accomplishments include making it possible for parents whose students are not on free or reduced lunch to eat lunch at school with their kids and charge it to their kids' accounts. Also Nancee Morris and I, inspired by a presentation at the National School Boards Association meeting, encouraged systematic efforts to ease transitions for kids moving from elementary to middle schools and middle schools to high schools. Also we learned about the Youth At Risk Behavior Survey and got our district to administer it and make its findings public. But pride I feel whenever I go to a school production or the fifth grade graduations or the high school graduations, and really every board meeting when we acknowledge the achievements of our teachers, our staff employees, and our students. The national Botball title twice in a row is a great example. Can I take credit? No, but it's great our students, teachers, and administrators make opportunities like that possible.

NT ??It seems Norman Public Schools is proactive in its approach to education. The board and administrative staff invest a lot of time providing professional development for teachers and educational opportunities for students. In the last decade what have been the more noticeable or significant shifts within in the district in regards to educational philosophy?

I'm not sure there have been major ones, but maybe we talk differently about things in light of the federal No Child Left Behind program. We always in Norman wanted all our students to do as well as they possibly could. But our superintendent does talk about being a child- and student-centered institution, not driven by what teachers or staff need but by what students need. Professional development is something teachers and staff like, I think, and they know that the goal is always to make themselves more effective in advancing our students.

?NT ??Looking at your involvement over the last nine years, you have been an active board member. You have served as president, chaired several committees and sat on the Oklahoma State School Boards Association's Board of Directors. What has sustained your dedication and motivation to the district and students?

Hearing about student success and teacher and staff triumphs. There are frustrations, but I know that we all in Norman are devoted to education because we know that without the university and without our great public institutions including our schools we would be just another suburb. We are not that, but we are the center for innovation and learning for our area and potentially for the region.

NT ??You recently were honored for your commitment to education. Could you tell us about the 2006 All-State School Board appointment?

The All-State School Board is an honor bestowed yearly on five outstanding members of boards from across the state. You get nominated by your superintendent or fellow board members, and being chosen means they write a heck of a good letter. This is not the same as the State School Board, an appointed body that makes policy decisions for all our public schools, meets frequently, and is a lot of work. The All-State Board nets me a coolio trophy in the shape of the state with my name on it. Since I've never been All-State at anything before, I'm very pleased. I was over three years at my California high school third in the state in French, third each year to different high school girls. So I always thought of myself as consistently third-rate, although being third in all of California was pretty good.

NT ??Beyond your recognitions, it is clear you are a strong proponent of education. And given your unique perspective as an OU professor and NPS board member, what is the relationship between the university and the district?

I think our school district is better for the presence of the university. We get lots of student teachers from the College of Education, and lots of advice and opportunities because the university is here. Lots of our teachers and administrators are or have been in graduate programs at OU, and that helps us all be better at what we do. And the university brats, from children of students and faculty to my own personal ones, give us a range of experiences and educational background we wouldn't otherwise have.

NT ??In your opinion how can OU and NPS continue to strengthen their partnership to meet the needs of the students and the community?

It's a constant effort on both sides, and certainly the University as a whole wants to assure that our public schools remain among the best in the state since most Norman kids go to public schools. I think there could be wider involvement on both sides in planning for the future, something we're trying to be systematic about with the facilities management study to which we look forward. To look at a specific thing, I and others on the board want to see more opportunities for foreign language study and more foreign languages available to Norman students. Since we are not a mega-district with lots of money to slosh around into new programs, there is a limit to what we can do without private and grant support. But as you know Dr. Lonnie Melvin at Madison has gotten a great grant to bring Lucy Dong to teach Chinese to everybody at Madison. We need to be able to offer similar experiences, and we need to make sure they are extended into middle schools and high schools. But it's going to be a challenge to find the way forward. And yet I think we all know that American understanding of and working with a wide range of foreign countries are the keys to the long-term economic and cultural future.

NT ??While you are looking into the future, what direction do you see NPS going?

As Linda Sexton, a previous All-State School Board winner and the veteran member of our board recently said, Norman is going to be different in the future. But I doubt our parents' goals will be one whit different, and so NPS will need to strive to give our students as wide a variety of experiences and exposures as we possibly can and assure that each kid is helped to grow in intellectual and social ways as fully as possible. I always hear about how we want the next Bill Gates to be from Oklahoma and of course stay in Oklahoma and grow our economy. I empathize with that hope, and we want to provide the finest in technical and entrepreneurial education to make that happen. But I have too the suspicion that my daughter is the next Georgia O'Keefe, meaning someone who may make her impact in some artistic field hitherto unimagined at least by her, and maybe much later in her life. We want to prepare people with all kinds of skills and intelligences, and the way to do that is to spread the knowledge she's exposed to as widely as possible. And we need to do that for everyone so that their imaginations can soar and find new niches. What was an operating system in 1970? Maybe somebody knew, but I sure didn't. The next big thing, I am sure, is in some Norman kid's doodles right now, and I want all the kids to keep on doodling, thinking, testing ideas, exploring the world.

And let me say one final thing: It's easy to be a successful board member here where we have so many great teachers and staff and such outstanding kids. Recently at NHS, I was introducing various people at an open house night to Lucy Dong, and they asked where she was from, and each time she explained she's from Xian, a city of six million people most famous for the terra cotta soldiers. One teacher broke the pattern. When Lucy said she was from Xian, the teacher said, "I've been there!" Our people are not all impressive in the same way, but many are very impressive indeed.

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