School board narrows down candidates to 4
Published Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Austin School Board will appoint one of four candidates to its empty seat next month.
Aaron DeVries, Robin Krueger, Jeff Ollman and Lisa Peters will interview in front of the board July 20, before one of them is selected to take Curt Rude’s vacated seat.
The seventh seat has been vacant since March when the board voted unanimously to oust Curt Rude, deciding a defamation suit he held against the district and a former superintendent posed a conflict of interest. The lawsuit was dismissed by a judge earlier this month.
School Board finalists are:
• Aaron DeVries, an Austin Medical Center accountant, ran for school board in 2009 and was knocked out of the running in the primary election. DeVries has two children in the district and has not held public office.
“Having a daughter with special needs in Special Education in the school district gives me a perspective that the board currently does not have,” DeVries wrote in his application.
DeVries said that he has attended board meetings for more than a year, is currently the parent facilitator on the district’s Special Education Advisory Council and will be a member of the Gifted and Talented Education Advisory Council this fall.
The most critical issue facing the board, DeVries wrote, is funding. Renewing the district’s operating levies and communicating financial information to the public, community partners and legislators would be among his concerns.
• Robin Krueger, a paralegal consultant, has children in the district. She is the treasurer of the Sumner Elementary Parent Teacher Council, a parent member of the district’s Instructional and Curriculum Advisory Committee and a parent member of the Gifted and Talented Education Advisory Council.
“I am an involved parent that wants the best education system for students, staff and community,” she wrote in her application.
Krueger did not identify an issue that she thought was most critical.
“There’s not one issue that’s more pressing that others,” she said Tuesday. “It’s a balancing act.”
• Jeff Ollman, a retired speech/language pathologist, also ran for school board in 2009. His children have graduated from the district and he has one grandchild in an Austin elementary school.
“During the 31 years that I worked in the Austin public and private schools, I worked in every elementary school building and both secondary schools,” Ollman wrote in his application.
Ollman said the most critical issues facing the board are that of meeting the standards of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and facing looming financial shortfalls. He suggested research and visits to successful districts to help with the NCLB issue; and communicating with the community and legislators, as well as considering budget reductions, to address financial issues.
• Lisa Peters, Austin Public Schools substitute teacher and tax preparer, has five children in the district. She has not held public office.
“A friend and I were talking about how only one person had applied, and I thought they needed more choices,” Peters said of her decision to run.
If appointed, Peters said working with the district’s budget and maintaining a breadth of classes and programs would be her chief concerns.
“The budget could be a problem in a couple years,” she said. “I don’t want to lose programs; I want to add programs.”
Peters said she would like to see additional advanced placement courses offered in high school to give graduates more competitive edge on their college applications.
The interviews will be open to the public in the city council chambers on July 20. The board will pick one of the finalists to served Rude's term, which ends Dec. 31, 2011. Exact interview times had not been set by press time.
Austin News
Two familiars, two new faces
The Post-Bulletin, Austin MN
Austin School Board members will have a mix of familiar and new faces to choose from when they interview finalists for Curt Rude's seat next month.
The finalists are Aaron DeVries, Robin Krueger, Jeff Ollman and Lisa Peters. Here is more information on them:
• DeVries, 33, is an accountant at Austin Medical Center. He grew up in Hollandale and graduated from Blooming Prairie High School in 1995. He has a bachelor's degree in accounting from Winona State University and is working on a master's degree in financial administration from the University of South Dakota. He is a member of the district's Special Education Advisory Committee and just joined its Gifted and Talented Committee. He was a member of the board at Arc Mower County before he got involved with the district.
DeVries said getting a referendum passed is the top issue, but making the system work for all of its students and getting more parent involvement are also key concerns.
• Krueger, 40, is a paralegal consultant who works out of her home in Austin. She has a bachelor's degree in accounting from the College of Idaho, which is near Boise, where she spent most of her military childhood. She is the treasurer of the parent-teacher council at Sumner Elementary School, where two of her three children are students. She also belongs to the Instructional Curriculum Advisory Committee and the Gifted and Talented Committee. She was also on the Early Childhood Family Education Committee.
She said the turnover in administrators — at the district and building levels — is an important issue, as well as managing the district's budget and providing extracurricular activities for students.
• Ollman, 60, was a speech-language pathologist for the district for 31 years before he retired in 2009. He is an Austin native and Austin High Schoolk graduate who received a business degree from Mankato State University in 1972 and a master's degree in speech and language pathology there in 1978. He was a member of the board of directors at the Parenting Resource Center and was a chief negotiator for the Austin Education Association in 2002.
Ollman was a candidate in the 2009 school board election.
Meeting the rising standards in No Child Left behind, dealing with the budget shortfalls and meeting the needs of English Language Learner students are the three challenges Ollman sees for the district.
• Peters, 40, is a substitute teacher for Austin Public Schools and a tax preparer. She is a 1987 AHS graduate and has a bachelor's degree in social work from Brigham Young University. Peters regularly attends PTC meetings at Banfield Elementary even though she isn't officially a member.
Peters sees keeping and improving programs as the main issue within the Austin district. She also thinks a unified school board that works as a cohesive unit and more
2 comments:
Way to go Lisa!
Neat! You're perfect for this, you have my vote. :)
Post a Comment