Meet Landon McCarter: Since McCarter started campaigning for a school board seat in the April 4 election, he has discussed his family’s roots in the school district. He’s a Kickapoo graduate, and he and his wife’s three kids all attend Springfield Public Schools. His mother Connie volunteered and worked as an instructional assistant in the district for 14 years. His late father Larry, who taught eighth-grade math in the district for three decades, influenced countless students.
But there’s a story he was briefly hesitant to share during an interview with the Hauxeda.
McCarter recalled his dad grading papers religiously from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., every school night. One night at dinner, when McCarter was 14 or 15 — “a young punk kid,” he said — he asked his dad why he hadn’t aspired to move up, to become a principal or pursue something beyond being a classroom teacher.
McCarter said his father responded by saying, “Son, the fact that you would say that and think that what I’m doing in the classroom is not one of the most important jobs in the country, you’re wrong.”
For McCarter, now 38, it was a teachable moment. And it was one reinforced by his dad’s former students, many of whom came to the family’s home to pay respects after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. McCarter said they told his father how learning algebra, or participating on school math teams, helped shape their lives. Those who visited went on to become engineers, scientists, professors, he said.
“He was loved by his students, and he was very successful,” he said. “I still run into so many people that had my dad and said, ‘Your dad, you know, changed my life.’”
McCarter, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Secure Agent Marketing, said he has a deep respect for teachers and believes his vision of a district that prioritizes academics and limits distraction can keep more of the district’s talented teachers from leaving SPS, which he said will help improve standardized test scores.
Points of interest: McCarter said a board member’s role includes bringing community issues to the administration’s attention, and an issue he has heard about from community members is the classroom environment.
“To me, the classroom environment and the distractions and the amount of things that we're asking these teachers to do besides teach is becoming overwhelming,” he said. “And I think that these teachers are going to other districts, and they're finding classrooms that are a little bit more under control from behavioral issues, and disciplinary (issues).”
One such distraction, he said, was the flying of Pride flags in Kickapoo classrooms. McCarter said he supported the district decision to remove the flags that some educators had in their rooms, a decision that cited policy on political and religious speech.
He said he has listened to board meetings where members of the public advocated for the presence of Pride flags, and said he understands that students who identify as LGBTQ+ want it in classrooms “because they feel comfortable.” But, he said, flying that flag opens the door to questions about whether other student groups deserve representation.
“Where's the Christian flag?” he said. “Where's the Muslim flag?”
He added: “It gets so convoluted that it is a distraction.”
Students get 174 days of instruction during a school year, McCarter said, “and every moment of bandwidth that is not given to the education and the curriculum and the reading, writing, arithmetic, the arts, in my opinion, needs to be carefully considered.”
McCarter said his experiences starting and running businesses will help him provide oversight in a district with an approximate $340 million annual budget. It’s an amount, he said, that does not square with the district’s MAP test scores.
He praised the educational experiences his three children have had in the district, and said he regularly attends school plays with current board member Kelly Byrne, whose kids are around the same ages as McCarter’s. McCarter supported Byrne’s successful 2022 campaign for a school board seat, but said he hasn’t yet had deep discussions about the school board with his friend and former Kickapoo basketball teammate. McCarter said he wanted to run his own race, and said he will be his own man if elected to the board.
Why did he run? “I have never felt called to be a teacher, but I do feel called to run for school board,” McCarter wrote on his campaign page. “I believe it is my duty to try to carry on the McCarter legacy in pouring into the youth of our community by giving them the best shot possible to pursue whatever they are called to pursue. It is our job as community leaders to fight for them and set them up for the best possible outcome by giving them the best education we can.”
Find Landon McCarter online at: landonmccarter4sps.com, Landon McCarter for SPS School Board on Facebook
