Local businessman Cary DuPuy, 47, took over the open at-large seat on the Waco Independent School District board of trustees last month after winning election over two other candidates. He succeeds local attorney David Schleicher. Constituents will probably eye DuPuy closer than others, if only because he is the son of Virginia DuPuy, former Waco mayor and now executive director of the Greater Waco Community Education Alliance. He has three children in Waco public schools, ages 8, 10 and 12.

•  “I have kids in the schools. Obviously, their education is important to me. But the education of kids of all the folks who live in this town is important. This town’s future is in those schools and we need to make that a bright future. How well we educate those kids will determine the degree to which we’re going to be successful in the future. We’ve got to home-grow our own talent.”

•  “I’ve got a lot of confidence in (new Superintendent) Bonny Cain. She’s an agent of change and we need change. I think we’ve suffered from a certain amount of mismanagement the last three or four years and folks not being held accountable. The character trait that Bonny Cain has is one where she’s not going to tolerate that. She’s not going to pull any punches. She’s got no patience for excuses. She’ll push and she’ll push hard. It’s going to be controversial and she’s going to need political support to back her up on some of these changes because I think some folks’ sacred cows may get gored.”

•  “I could pick out a number of teachers who really made a difference with me in my own education, but if I was pressed to pick one, it’d be Sharon Mansfield, my English teacher in 10th grade at Richfield High School. She taught me to write — not just how to write but how to write well. I’m talking about the discipline of writing and how it informs your thinking.”

•  “I’m not an educator. We have professional educators working for the school district. I’ll review the work and quality and results they’re getting, but I’m in no way going to tell them how to do their job.”

•  “The biggest difficulty as a parent is finding time to meaningfully interact with all my children’s activities. My oldest goes into seventh grade next year and that struggle to commit more time can be very frustrating. I often think, ‘If only I had another three or four hours in the day to commit.’ ”

•  “There’s considerable feeling on the part of our children that education dominates the conversation when my mother (Virginia DuPuy) and I get together with the rest of the family. My mother has a range of issues she’s always thinking about and I’ve got mine, and we pretty much use each other as sounding boards. We don’t always agree on things. And neither of us concedes much readily.”

•  “I’d rather pay (teachers) a whole lot more and have more flexibility (regarding teacher contracts) in who works for  us.”

•  “My wife and I each have our areas of specialization as parents. One concern I have is the monitoring of outside influences on our kids — TV, the Internet, Facebook and all the social media. It’s not that I’ve had any struggles with them on this, it’s just a matter of what they might run into.”

•  “On the whole, I think my background in business, in finance, is needed on the school board in terms of picking through financial statements and figuring out what we can cut, especially at a time of budget cuts. I’m not happy about the budget cuts, but, make no mistake, there is waste in WISD. I assume there is waste at the Waco Tribune-Herald. I know there is some at DuPuy Oxygen. It’s part of every organization, going in and finding out what is important and what is not.”

•  “Amazingly enough, David (Schleicher) didn’t offer me any advice. David and I are in many respects from opposite ends of the political spectrum, but we’ve known each other a long time. I gave up a long time ago any notion that my brand of thinking is the only answer. I think David trusts my judgment, but I do rely on him as a resource.”

•  “This may get me in trouble with the rest of the board, but I’m reluctant to say the next legislature should throw money at us. I’m too fiscally conservative to believe that. But there is a real possibility legislators need to monitor the situation with schools over the next two years and make sure the train doesn’t run off the tracks in terms of budgets cuts.”

•  “After my first meeting as a school board member, I was impressed at just how much information you have to go through to do a good job as a school board member. A lot of it is about familiarizing yourself with the agenda and everything on it so you can ask good questions. I’ll own up to it — my initial reaction after that first board meeting was, ‘Wow — I wasn’t prepared for all this!’ ”