Charles Ballard calls for reform in the Pennsylvania School Boards Association as he enters the candidacy for vice president in 2014.

PSBA advertises itself as the "primary resource for school boards and public education" and "representing the public's interest in public education."

In his online introduction, Ballard opens by stating plainly PSBA needs to change. "If you don't want PSBA to change, don't vote for me."

Ballard describes his decision to apply for candidacy as a response to PSBA's passivity toward specific issues over the last few years and in anticipation of greater challenges that public education will be facing in the coming years.

Public education has been suffering increased unpopularity; Ballard noted a recent movement to try to privatize education and decried the ever expanding challenge of charter and cyber schools in the country.

PSBA, he says, should be doing more to respond to these accusations that public schools are government schools and only brainwashing our children.

Ballard is specifically interested in initiating public service announcements for radio and television: "We are NOT government schools–we are PUBLIC schools–YOUR schools," reads the message on his candidacy page on PSBA's website. Ballard wants to see PSBA taking on the state legislature more directly, for instance in regard to unfunded mandates.

These, Ballard says, are the legislature's way of avoiding a tax increase for the state by imposing it on the school districts. He posits unfunded mandates are a burden on school districts, making it more difficult for them to do their job.

And it is this job Ballard believes in so strongly. "One thing public schools do is to get people to understand that there are people with other viewpoints than theirs and they have to learn to live with them," Ballard told The Press. "It's a combination of civilization and civics."

A particular challenge to this is charter and cyber schools, another drain on tax dollars. In charter schools, Ballard sees a detrimental influence on education and the country. Though it can be said charter schools are public schools from a legal standpoint, Ballard says they really are not because they are self-selecting to a certain degree; they choose the kind of people they want in the school.

"Too much of that is going to vulcanize education," he says. Without the variety of beliefs and opinions and personal interaction on all levels offered by public schools, Ballard sees the growing trend toward privatizing education as bad for the system of education and bad for the country.

It wasn't only these concerns that moved Ballard to apply for candidacy.

He says PSBA hasn't been doing enough to provide support for school board members who regularly face vitriolic attacks such as those recently levied at Superintendent Tom Seidenberger over a gun control issue that started with an oversight in the yearbook. Recent coverage, too, of the Coatesville superintendent's resignation, is another example of situations for which the average school board director is not prepared, and which may discourage good people from seeking the position.

Ballard says the average school board director serves about seven years, which means a lot of one-term directors. That time is not enough and PSBA isn't doing enough to encourage or enable these people to seek re-election. For this Ballard has some ideas he wants to develop more fully with PSBA.

A new voting procedure initiated in 2013 got Ballard the vote of the school board at their Sept. 23 meeting.

Previously candidates were elected by secret ballot, resulting in some 4,000 votes. This year everything is public. Five hundred votes for each candidate will be submitted across the whole of Pennsylvania, each representing one of the commonwealth's school districts. Ballard says this will also ensure participation by some school boards which never voted before.