Lock Beachum named to U.S. school boards group

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGS-TOWN — City schools board member Lock P. Beachum Sr. has been named to a position in the National School Boards Association.

Beachum, a retired educator and current school board vice president, was elected as the 2009-10 steering committee chairman of NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE).

As committee chairman, he will automatically serve as a voting member of the NSBA Board of Directors.

The election is “very significant,” said Scott Ebright, deputy director of communications for the Ohio School Boards Association.

“We’ve gone a long time without any representation on the NSBA board,” he said, pointing out that this is the first time since 1983 that Ohio has had representation on the NSBA, and it is the very first time that an Ohioan has been named to the CUBE steering committee chair.

“He is passionate about education,” Ebright said of Beachum.

Beachum said the post puts him in a position to be able to speak on the subject of education with the U.S. secretary of education as well as the president.

The steering committee meets quarterly and consists of 15 urban school board members from across the United States, plus the immediate past chairman. Its task is to improve the effectiveness of school board members as policymakers in urban centers.

Beachum, who was born in Alabama, came to Youngstown in 1966 and taught school and coached athletics here before being promoted to assistant principal and later principal, serving at both the high school and junior high levels.

He is a former president of the Youngstown Area Urban League, has been active in various community and education organizations and served as a city councilman in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

He retired from education in 1988 after 22 years with the city school system and was first elected to the school board in 1997.

gwin@vindy.com