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Former Youngstown school board member earns national recognition
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
A former longtime city school board member has been selected to receive a lifetime achievement award from the National School Boards Association/Council of Urban Boards of Education.
Lock P. Beachum Sr., who served four, four-year terms on the Youngstown school board and is a retired city schools principal, will be presented the Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime Achievement Award at CUBE’s 47th Annual Conference on Oct. 2-4 in Miami, Fla.
“It’s a real honor,” Beachum said.
He served two years as CUBE’s vice chairman and three years as chairman.
“To have that kind of respect from board members from all over the country, from big cities like Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago” means a lot, he said.
The selection entitles Beachum to complimentary registration to the conference, lodging and round-trip airfare.
Beachum said one of his major accomplishments as a CUBE member was to have urban cities play a role in the policies that affect urban schools and on policies governing NSBA and legislation recommended to Congress including the impact of charter and community schools on urban schools.
Mays, for whom the award is named, was the president of Morehouse College and a former president of the Atlanta Board of Education. He also was a minister, author, teacher and civil rights activist.
He was a man whose accomplishments and contributions are to be admired, Beachum said, and he feels privileged to receive an award named for Mays.
Mays died in 1984, and NSBA created the award in his name in 2007. Mays was the first recipient, posthumously.
Beachum is the first recipient from Ohio.
“To be selected from so many — for someone to pick Lock Beachum from Youngstown is indeed an honor,” he said.
The award “recognizes an individual who — during his or her lifetime — has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to the educational needs of urban schoolchildren through his or her service as a local school board member,” reads the letter announcing Beachum’s selection. “Mr. Beachum certainly is deserving of this award.”
Beachum was nominated for the honor by Michael Murphy, school board member.
“He deserves it for all his years of service to the school board and to CUBE,” Murphy said.
He said Beachum mentored him when he first was elected to the board, particularly regarding school district finances.
“He was a good school board member, and I thought he deserved it,” Murphy said.