Three seats up for election on School Board

By Tracy Ouellette

SLN Staff

The April 5 Spring General Election will get the East Troy Community School District Board of Education election cycle back on track after one of the seats was left off the ballot in the 2015 spring election.

The top two vote getters will fill the standard three-year terms held by board President Ted Zess and Vice-president Dawn Buchholtz. The candidate who garners the third most votes will fill the remaining two years of the term Mike Zei is serving after appointment last year. Zei chose not to run for election this time around.

The four candidates on the ballot in April are Zess, Buchholtz, and newcomers Sue Frohling and Anthony LaShay.

With the School District’s referendum projects in progress, the candidates said they are looking to the future of the district and the challenges it faces, along with all the districts in the state, with funding and teacher retention.

Why are you running?

Frohling said she chose to run after watching events unfold over the past couple of years.

“I’ve went to a few meetings and saw this crazy vicious cycle,” Frohling said. “The district should be run like a business, it’s not about you or you or you, it’s about the schools and what’s best for them. But then went to more meetings and I saw things start to level out and it wasn’t as crazy.”

Frohling said the believes her background in business will be an asset in helping deal with the fiscal concerns.

LaShay said he wanted to focus on the needs of the students and the families in the district by making decision based on what was in their best interest.

“I’m looking to make changes within the School District and looking toward what’s important to the kids and families in the community,” he said. “And to continue to keep East Troy as one of the top school districts in the State of Wisconsin.”

Buchholtz said it was her desire to encourage collaboration, promote healthy debate and ensure accountability that prompted her to run again. She said she was grateful for the opportunity to work with many outstanding seasoned board members during her nine years on the board and wanted to continue serving the district as a board member.

“The board faces significant challenges,” Buchholtz said. “The key to successful outcomes does not lie in ‘what’ but the ‘how.’ How will we reach a unified resolution? Will it be through mutual respect, understanding and collaboration?”

Zess said he was seeking re-election because he wanted to continue to “enhance the education experience for our students by growing the opportunities for all students whether they are planning on college or directly going into the labor force.”

Zess said he strongly supported advancing STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) disciplines and using project-based learning to engage all students.

Fiscal challenges

School district funding throughout the state, and country, has been an issue for years with federal funding for many programs drying up. In Wisconsin, the passing of Act 10 and the inability for collective bargaining with teachers’ unions has also created a highly competitive environment where teachers are far more mobile in their careers than ever before.

Smaller school districts like East Troy struggle with reduced state funding and challenges such as open enrollment and a general declining enrollment over the past 10 years.

The candidates were all well aware of the issues facing the district and the fiscal concerns were near or at the top of their lists of things that needed to be addressed.

“I think the district is going in the right direction with the STEM programs and SmartLabs,” LaShay said. “I think we need to use the funds on programs that will encourage people to send their children to school here.”

Zess agreed, saying East Troy will never be a Division 1 sports school, so while it may lose some athletes, the district needed to focus on providing cutting-edge education to attract students. He said reversing the open enrollment numbers in the district would go a long way to helping ease the financial difficulties.

“We’re ahead of the game with the 1:1 technology and the SmartLabs, other districts won’t be able to jump on board as fast for that,” he said.

Buchholtz said open enrollment and the annual budget shortfalls were an ongoing problem for the district. She said educating the “whole child” was something she believed in. She said she would like to see more discussion, with many ideas, about how to face the financial challenges facing the district.

“Enrollment is probably the biggest hurdle,” Frohling said. “How do we get people to want to come to East Troy? What attracts people to these other schools that we don’t have? We need to acknowledge the places we might need work in and look at what can be changed.”

Community relations

Schools and community go hand in hand and the candidates said they felt a strong responsibility to the East Troy area and its residents.

Frohling said her decision to run for the board was not politically motivate, it was because she felt strongly about serving her community.

“It’s not politics; it’s School Board,” Frohling said. “It’s not about you, it’s about what’s best for the kids and the community as a whole. And you have to listen to people. You have to take everyone’s opinion in, they may know or see something from an angle you haven’t.”

Zess said he could see some of the issues in the workforce and community first hand and wanted to do what he could to find solutions to the problems.

“I care deeply about these schools and these students going through it,” he said. “Being on the other end as an employer, I see what’s almost lacking. If we can change that by spurring them creatively, they can take charge of their own lives.”

Buchholtz said her responsibility to the residents in the community was the driving force behind her steadfast position on the failed referendum in the fall of 2014.

“All the heartache surrounding the third failed referendum could have been avoided if we had experienced leadership at the helm,” Buchholtz said.

LaShay said the best interest of the kids and the community had to be considered at all times.

“Before you make a decision on anything, you have to ask yourself ‘Is this in the beset interest of the kids and community’ and if you have to ask that every time,” LaShay said.

The future

The candidates said they had high hopes for the future of the East Troy School District and all of them wanted to be actively involved in the decision-making process to keep offering high-quality education to the area’s children.

“I don’t think people are aware of how top notch our team are at East Troy,” Zess said. “We do have visionaries, and the way they work together as a team is vitally important to our schools, we have programs that match or better most larger schools in the area.”

LaShay said the technology available to the kids in the district was “far above other area school.” He said the district needed to focus on providing programming that advances technology and kept up with the trends.

Frohling said maybe it was time for a change on the board and wished more people would step up and attend the board meetings and get involved.

“If you’re that unhappy where things are, don’t sit there and complain about it, do something,” Frohling said. “If you think it’s time for a change, make the change.”

Buchholtz said there were so many “exciting” things going on in the district with the referendum projects, the new SmartLabs and innovative programing, she saw a bright future for the kids.

“Which is what this is all about.”