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A decade before attorney Andy Hosmer was elected to the Springfield school board, he took a very different type of volunteer job to help children.

He moved to Arad, Romania, during a stint with the Peace Corps and used his expertise to help an advocacy group establish a school for physically disabled students.

“In Romania, before this organization, disabled kids just didn’t go to school,” he said. “They didn’t want to see them in a school. They didn’t even want to see them outside of their homes.”

Hosmer helped the school founders raise money, write grants, organize protests and lobby for changes. “You get a lot more out of it than you’re providing,” he told the News-Leader in 1996.

Six years ago, when the oldest of his three daughters was getting ready to start school in Springfield, he turned his attention to local education issues. He ran successfully for a spot on the school board.

“I obviously wanted to do something — to give back. I was concerned and wanted to make sure she had a great education,” he said.

Early on, Hosmer successfully pushed for the board to “go paperless” and forgo sending thick agenda packets by courier in favor of posting proposals, policy changes and reports online.

He advocated for creating an energy manager position, developing “sustainability” guidelines for future renovation and construction, and making the new Hickory Hills Elementary and Middle School a “green” building.

Hosmer has also championed the district’s move away from reliance on the Missouri Assessment Program and toward measuring how much progress each student makes during a school year.

At a forum last week, Hosmer made it clear that increasing teacher pay and flexibility is critical.

“One of the ways you can incentivize good teaching is to give teachers more autonomy,” he said. “If you set high standards for teachers but then give them the autonomy to teach the way they want to teach, that does work.”

Hosmer doesn’t shy away from asking “tough questions” at the board table because, he said, “it helps the community to be there with me when I ask the question.”