The annual KSBA “caravan across the Commonwealth” – also known as the Fall Regional Meetings – is well underway. And this year’s sessions have a new twist.
“This spring, I joined in the celebration of the retirement of Barbourville Independent school board member Buck Treadway after 55 years’ service,” said KSBA Executive Director Mike Armstrong. “Then a superintendent suggested that the association might consider recognizing more of our longest-serving members in some way. We already recognize any board member with 20 years’ service during the annual conference.
“Our team put its heads together and came up with the idea of using the regional meetings as a way to acknowledge members with more than 40 years of board service,” he said. “Forty or more years represents at least 10 board terms – a nice, round number and truly something worth recognizing. So we’re starting a new tradition of recognizing every board member who passes the 40-year mark at her or his regional meeting that year.”
To start the initiative, all sitting board members with 40 or more years’ service are being singled out at this year’s fall meetings.
At the Second Region meeting, two members – Frank Riney III of Daviess County and Otis Griffin of McLean County – received special certificates of appreciation. Similarly, John C. Combs of Perry County was recognized at the Upper Kentucky River Region meeting.
More recognitions will be acknowledged in the October edition of Boardcast.
Photo above: KSBA Executive Director Mike Armstrong congratulates Perry County school board member John C. Combs (left) on his more than four decades of service during the fall regional meeting at Owsley County High School.