For Dr. Emily Riner, education is the gateway to opportunity. It is a cause she has worked for as a volunteer, paraeducator, teacher, college of education professor, and for the past four years, a school board member in Perry-Lecompton USD 343.

She currently serves as the Region 1 Vice President of KASB and has been endorsed by the Nominating Committee and Board of Directors as a President-elect candidate. If elected, she will serve as President-elect in 2025 and President in 2026.

Emily’s passion for education and public service is based on her own family and personal experiences. “My mother was a teacher for 33 years in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,” she said. Her father, a first-generation college graduate, went back to school after 20 years because it was the only way he could advance at work. “When he graduated, the trajectory of my life changed. My life prospects changed. We were able to afford piano lessons, and my parents didn’t need to work multiple jobs to support the family,” she said. “I saw the difference furthering your education can make.”

In high school, Emily’s interest in politics was fueled when she worked on the campaign of a teacher and family friend for the South Dakota Legislature, where she also served an internship. She studied political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota and was accepted to the law school.  

However, she first wanted to spend some time in public service. She was selected to participate in Teach for America (TFA) which brought her to Kansas City. TFA is a volunteer program that places recent college graduates in teaching positions in high poverty communities for at least two years. TFA teachers are not required to have an education degree but are given intensive initial training and take college courses during the program.

“My mother was an educator, and I know that there are very few problems that education can't, in some way, be a part of the solution. I thought, if I can go be a teacher for a couple of years, I will learn a lot from that, and hopefully I can give something to a community and then I'll go to law school.” 

Working in a high poverty inner-city school was a learning experience. Emily had a sense growing up that her family was very poor. “But I didn't understand intergenerational poverty. My first couple of years of teaching were very eye opening, trying to figure out how best to support students in that situation. How can we break that cycle?”
Her position in the third year of TFA was eliminated due to last-minute budget cuts. “It was too late to start law school, and so I ended up getting a teaching assistant role in a very different and a very affluent suburban district. It gave me a great perspective on what it was like to serve as paraeducator and the level of labor that they go through.”

During this time, Emily started working with a school-based program called AVID. “It's basically a college preparation program for students who have no familial history of higher education. It's teaching them confidence and study skills and note taking, and how to fill out a FAFSA, and how to write an essay. I had these kids all four years of high school, and that's where I really felt like I was fulfilled in doing work for kids who maybe weren't as easily seen in the high school.”

In the meantime, Emily completed a doctoral program in education through the University of Missouri-Kansas City, with a focus on urban education and a dissertation on the post-secondary experiences of first-generation college graduates.

After meeting her husband, they decided to move to his hometown of Lecompton. After commuting for several years, she wanted a job closer to home. “I explored positions at several area school districts, but in 2019, I got a job at Western Governors University as an instructor in their teachers’ college,” she said. “WGU in an online university founded by the Western Governors Association and their target student is really an adult who needs something flexible.”
 

“The other big thing in 2019 was I decided to run for school board because I was feeling, after just a few months, disconnected from K-12,” said Emily. “I did knock on doors for that election, just because I wanted to get to know my neighbors better. I wanted to get a feel for what they wanted from the district.”

Emily had no idea that a pandemic was coming just a few months after she took office. “I had to make choices that a lot of times were in direct opposition to what people were asking for, but I felt my responsibility was to keep as many people as possible safe with the information I had.”

Emily points to a couple of things that helped her district during the pandemic. One was a high-quality day-care program and the other was a district priority on keeping class sizes small, making it easier to provide safe distancing. “Because of that and the daycare, parents who needed to leave the house to go to work knew their kids were safe with us.”

Emily now serves as WGU government relations director, which she says perfectly combines her love of education and political science policy. She was reelected to another term on the school board in 2023 and also elected regional vice president by school board members in KASB’s Region 1. “I was lucky in that I was able to go to the KASB conference immediately after I was elected,” she said. “The networking opportunities, the professional development was all top-notch.” 

With experience as a student, para, teacher, college professor, local board member, and political advocate, Emily is now running for leadership of KASB. “KASB has over a century of excellence tied to its name. I think we need to keep grounded in that history of excellence, but also keeping an eye forward on remaining flexible, being innovative, and seeking feedback to figure out how we can better support our members,” she said. “We know there will be obstacles in the future, but as long as we can remain nimble and excited and on top of things, our members will continue to be successful.”