Tai Ward for Fairfield Community School Board
#Ward4board
“It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility, and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children’s future.”
– Robert F. Kennedy
About Me
I grew up here in the Fairfield Community School District before earning a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University. In my career as a software engineer I have worked for two-person startups, billion dollar corporations, and co-founded several startup companies of my own.
Ten years ago my wife and I moved back to southeast Iowa to raise our two beautiful daughters in our hometown of Fairfield. Now they learn from some of the same teachers and walk down the same school hallways that we both did as children.
Community involvement has been a priority for our family since moving back. Fairfield is our home. Volunteer work can be the lifeblood of making a small town like ours thrive. I am proud to have contributed to the following community organizations over the past decade:
- Fairfield CoLab – Almost seven years ago, I joined up with a group of like-minded entrepreneurs and we created a nonprofit coworking space in the unused second story of the Bonnell building on the square. The mission was to provide our town’s legendary entrepreneurship community with affordable small business office amenities in a supportive collaborative environment. I have volunteered as a director for the CoLab’s entire existence and am proud to have been the board’s first president.
- Education Foundation of Fairfield – Every year this foundation supports our local teachers with almost $50k in grants and some of the largest local 4-year scholarships available to graduating seniors. I have been honored with the opportunity to volunteer on this amazing board for the past 5 years and proud to be a past president of this great foundation.
- Youth Softball Coach – As an avid sports fan I have been active in coaching softball at the little league and travel ball level all the way back to our daughters’ tee ball days. I love my time working directly with the youth of Fairfield to help develop leadership skills & self-esteem on the ballfield. I am so proud of their success on the field during this fall tournament season and look forward to the spring season in 2022.
- Parents Supporting School Safety – This great organization of local parents was motivated by another tragic shooting in one of our country’s schools to fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for school safety equipment. It was a big success and they were able to equip our schools with emergency direct dial systems to greatly reduce the response time and save lives if the unthinkable ever happens here.
Why I Am Running
In my time on the Education Foundation board I have had a bird’s eye view of the kind of funding our teachers are consistently struggling to find. Flexible classroom seating options, equipment for the new e-sports team, cameras to stream their desktop to kids who have to learn remotely, and many more creative things that our teachers are trying to provide state of the art education to the kids of Fairfield are all things that the foundation has granted to local teachers. This also gave me the opportunity to work with school board members and our superintendent to help support these teachers who go the extra mile to break through to the kids of today.
Our kids deserve to learn in a healthy environment from the best educators available using the latest techniques and technology to prepare them for the workplace of the future. I am a big proponent of STEM curriculum because it provides a toolkit of logic and problem solving so kids will learn ‘how to think’ instead of ‘what to think’. With the appropriate tools, we can foster a lifelong love of learning and prepare our children to be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
My favorite days at the CoLab were when we have hosted local high school students for entrepreneur exercises. These teams of high school kids would pick random words from a board then would have 30 minutes to brainstorm a product, a business plan, logo, and do a 5 minute presentation for our “shark tank” judges on their new company. The creativity, ingenuity, and presentation skills of these kids blew me away.
The last few years have been challenging for our FCSD board. Between buildings closing, other buildings needing major repair / updates, COVID-19 protocols in and out of the classroom, and continuing shortages of teachers, they have had some difficult and controversial decisions to make. Local control of community schools is very important to protect and it has necessitated hours upon hours of additional work by our school board. Our community deserves new school board members who are ready to also roll up their sleeves, do the research, do the work, and make the decisions that are best for our children and the children decades into the future.