Who is Ozark Schools Support Team?

Ozark Schools Support Team (OSST) is exactly what the name implies.  We are a group dedicated to supporting the Ozark School District in its mission to educate our students in order to graduate the best possible citizens, thinkers, leaders, and educators of the generation that follows them. To that end, we work with citizens, teachers, administrators, and the school board in support of our motto: Strong communities build strong schools to build strong citizens to build strong communities.

We cherish a strong bond with school board members, school administrators, teachers, parents, taxpayers, and all patrons of the school district who share this belief. We stand ready to support any and all who understand that the purpose of education is to develop graduates who can think critically and enter the world ready, able, and willing to explore new solutions to both arising and age-old issues.

To that end, communities everywhere elect representatives from the district to govern the local public education structure. The word govern is not used lightly here. The school board is the government of the school. The board does not answer to educators or administrators; it answers only to its district patrons, the taxpayers in the community. Nor does it answer to the Missouri School Board Association or the Missouri Education Roundtable; it answers only to its patrons. Outside a very few State laws that must be adhered to with respect to reporting, it does not even answer to DESE; it answers only to its patrons.  We the people of this community elect this board, monitor this board, and require that this board answer to the community.  OSST exists to support a board that supports the elective, representative, democratic republic form of governance and to bring a board that strays from those principles back to that form of governance.

Long gone are the days when school boards are dictated to by their own administrators.  Administrators are hired to support the mission of the board - not to direct it.

Gone are the days when our elected representatives choose not to hear what we have to say about the job we elected them to do but instead physically usher parents and taxpayers out of meetings simply for having a different opinion.

Here to stay, in Ozark at least, is the day when community, school board, and school work together to build a better tomorrow by graduating strong citizens who are ready, willing, and able to carry on the great American tradition.