For eight years, John Robison has served on the Davis School District Board of Education, six of those as president. Robison attended his last board meeting Dec. 3 because come January, he will retire. 

“My son was finishing residency in Rochester, New York,” said Robison. “My wife and I were helping his two kids and his wife get ready to move. When I started to say something, my 4-year-old granddaughter said, ‘stop, we've heard enough from you.’ (Now) you’ve heard enough from me.”

Robison has been in education for 40 years. “I ran for two reasons,” he said. “One I wanted to increase teachers’ salaries and get them more help in the classroom. The second reason was because of the students. I wanted to help them the best that I could. That’s been my goal and still is to this day.” 

Robison said he started in education because he wanted to coach. “At that time you had to be a teacher in order to coach. I was prancing around like I was the coolest man on campus. I was in heaven.”

One of his students wouldn’t dress for P.E. and Robison said he got on the kid. “I hauled him down to the office knowing the Vice Principal would rip him to pieces.”

 But he was just talking to the kid, said Robison. “As he (the boy) was sitting there I saw he had tears running down his cheeks as he said why he didn’t dress for P.E. It was because his dad beat him with a waffle cord.”

 He took his shirt off and his back was hamburger, Robison said. “It was the worst thing I could ever see. At that moment I changed my philosophy. I didn’t really think about coaching being that important anymore. What I thought about was how important every kid was and not knowing what that kid went through either that morning or the night before.”

Robison said he resolved that day that he would try to make sure the kids that he taught had a better life. “I look back on that experience with embarrassment but a great deal of appreciation because it shaped what I did from that 1977 school year to today. I hope you know where my heart is. It’s with those kids. It’s with the teachers who teach those kids.”

During his time on the board he was faced with some difficult decisions, said Robison. “We had to navigate through COVID. Along with the administration we were very careful and meticulous about what to do.”

When the governor asked everyone to wear masks and he shut down the schools there was some controversy, Robison said. “We gathered information from several different sources. We didn’t just make a knee jerk decision on what we should do.”

Robison is especially proud of the teen centers. “A good friend of mine at East High School told me about the teen center at their school,” he said. “I thought it was a great idea. He showed me how they had converted an area for a teen center. I thought ‘we should have one of those.’ We took a group of people from the district to East.”

That was the beginning of teen centers, said Robison. “Jodi (Lunt) should receive the lion’s share of the credit but we were hooked at the hip.”

This past year Robison, Board Member Emily Price and Assistant Superintendent John Zurbuchen worked together to develop the Coaches Code of Ethics. “That has been implemented in all of the schools,” he said. “We’ve also increased teachers’ salaries over those eight years. I’m proud to have been a part of that.”

“I’ve known John for 20 years,” said Superintendent Dr. Dan Linford. “He’s a legend. He has a commanding presence. You know he’s going to do the right thing, whether it’s popular or not.” That comes with some slings and arrows, he said. “This is a man who is willing to stand up and take some slings and arrows to do what is right for kids.” λ