Many chalkboard champions have gone on to serve their communities as politicians. One such individual is Elaine Kontominas Alquist.

Elaine Alquist was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 21, 1944. She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College, Illinois, in 1966, and her master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1967. She was employed as a teacher of algebra and trigonometry, and also worked as a school counselor in Chicago public schools. In 1981 she was elected PTA president, and in 1983 she served eight years as first a member and then the president of the Cupertino Union School District Board of Education. During her tenure there, Elaine initiated the district’s Disaster Preparedness Plan and helped to develop the district’s first Strategic Long Range Plan for the district’s 12,000 students.

In 1996 Elaine became the first Greek American woman elected to the California State Legislature. She was re-elected to two consecutive terms in 1998 and 2000. In the legislature, she made made it a priority to fight for improved health care for Californians, co-authoring Healthy Families legislation that extended health coverage for California’s uninsured children.

As a former high school math teacher, guidance counselor, school board member, and member of the California Post Secondary Education Commission, Elaine has been  recognized by her peers  in the legislature as an expert on education policy. She has dedicated herself to improving students’ math skills, authoring legislation that provided $28 million for staff development of mathematics teachers over the last two fiscal years. Currently, she is working on legislation to improve the funding for California’s students and to provide tax incentives for vocational programs and life-long learning through her Graduate Education Opportunity Act legislation.

Elaine Alquist was elected to the California State Senate in November 2004 and is currently serving as State Senator for District 13. She was re-elected to a second term in 2008. Her final term ended in 2012.

One amazing chalkboard champion was teacher, dressmaker, and union organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. This remarkable woman was born in 1837 in Cork City, County Cork, Ireland, the daughter of impoverished tenant farmers. She was just a teenager when her family immigrated to Canada to escape the Irish Potato Famine. Her family later moved to the United States.

All her life, Mary was passionate about the welfare of children and the underprivileged. Following her graduation from normal school at age seventeen, she became a schoolteacher, first at a convent in Monroe, Michigan, and later in Memphis, Tennessee. It was in Memphis that she met and married George E. Jones, an iron molder and union member. Tragically, the young schoolteacher lost her husband and all four of their children, all under the age of five, in the yellow fever epidemic of 1867. Next, Mary relocated to Chicago and established a dressmaking shop. Unfortunately, the workshop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Following the demise of her business, Mary began working as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers Union. She helped coordinate several major strikes, and she also co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Because she referred to the union members as “her boys,” Mary was often referred to as “Mother” Jones. Mary gained fame for mobilizing the wives of striking coal miners to march with brooms and mops in an effort to block strikebreakers from crossing the picket lines.  In 1902, one American district attorney called her “the most dangerous woman in America” for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners.

In 1903, Mary was greatly disturbed by the inadequate enforcement of child labor laws in mines and silk mills in Pennsylvania, so she organized one hundred youngsters in a Children’s March from Kensington, Philadelphia, to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay, New York. In the procession, the children carried banners that proclaimed, “We want to go to school, and not the mines!”

Mary Harris Jones died in Adelphi, New York, on November 30, 1930, at the age of 93. She was buried in Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois. Mary Harris “Mother” Jones Elementary School in Adelphi was named in her honor. This amazing former schoolteacher will always be remembered as a chalkboard champion.

Chalkboard champion DeWayne Bunch was a teacher of mathematics and science at Whitley County High School in Williamsburg, Kentucky, for seventeen years. DeWayne was also a member of the Kentucky National Guard for twenty-three years, and had served as a first sergeant on a tour of duty in Iraq. His valor there earned him a Bronze Star. A multi-talented individual, DeWayne was elected in 2010 to the Kentucky State House of Representatives representing the 82nd District. As a legislator, he served on House committees for education, veterans’ affairs, and transportation.

Sadly, DeWayne’s story does not have a happy ending. One morning in 2011, a brawl between two students broke out in the school cafeteria. DeWayne was the first of three faculty members who rushed in to quell the fray. Unfortunately, DeWayne took a direct punch meant for another student, was knocked to the floor, and hit his head on the hard surface, described as “like slate.” Suffering from severe head and spinal cord injuries, DeWayne was rushed to the nearest hospital. What followed was a year of extensive rehabilitative therapy, during which time DeWayne resigned his position in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and his wife, Regina Bunch, a special education teacher at Whitely County Middle School, was elected to fill his vacated position.

Sadly, DeWayne died as a result of his injuries just over a year later, on July 11, 2012. He was only 49 years old. Our country lost a true hero and chalkboard champion that day.