April 2013 BOE candidate races are shaping up

Chuck Jackson, Pattsi Petrie and I met at Houlihans yesterday and talked about Chuck’s bid for one of the School Board seats. A quick call to Tammy Sowers (Administrative Assistant – she knows everything ) confirmed the following (btw, I am listing all names alphabetically by last name in an attempt to remove bias):

4-year candidates (3 seats available)

• Laurie Bonnett
• Chuck Jackson
• Scott MacAdam
• Lynn Stuckey
• John William III

 

2-year candidates (2 seats available)

• Stig Lanesskog
• Ileana Saveley

 

Meaning that the two incumbents will automatically win the 2-year seats (uncontested), and the 5 new candidates will have to battle it out for the three 4-year seats. Just to make it clear, Chuck has asked me to help with his campaign (we are working on websites, hand-outs, etc now). For the sake of reference and completeness, the remaining board members after April will be Jamar Brown and Kristine Chalifoux. Sue Grey and Tom Lockman have both stepped down, and the Board is accepting applications for a 4-month board appointment – I would not be surprised if all 5 incoming candidates submitted applications.

 

So think about this. After the April 9th election, the incumbents will be Jamar Brown, Kristine Chalifoux, Stig Lanesskog and Ileana Saveley. There will be three new faces at the table (two of which may be semi-incumbent if appointed). It is up to us to decide who those three new faces are. What do you want this board to do for the next 2 or 4 years? Keep in mind that we are probably looking at a big huge tax referendum in April 2014. Also, there is a ton of shuffling going on right now as Unit 4 figures out how to handle unexpected growth in numbers of students. Oh, not to mention Common Core will be more ubiquitous and we are gearing up for all-digital standardized testing (by 2015 at the latest).

 

So I ask you, what do you want this board to do?