Field for school board openings grows to 11

“Now is more important than ever that we have the quality candidates and retain those that want to work here so that they don’t have to look at these other districts,” Shewell said. “So that they can be proud to say, ‘I’m good, I want to stay in St. Joe.’”

Gehring, who previously served on the school board for about a year as a vacancy appointee, is a local businessman eyeing a second try at elected office. Rather than come in like a bull in a china shop seeking to shake things up, a board member’s duty is to work with the district, Gehring said.

“You can’t really go into it looking to change things,” he said. “You’re working with six other people and you want to maybe improve things. The board is on the right direction ... The administration’s moving in the right direction. And I think being on the board, I want to just to help create the best possible environment for the students and teachers to be in.”

Cook, an athletics leader who currently serves as assistant coach of the Central High School swimming team, said she is focused on helping students who are in danger of falling through the cracks. That means, for academic or behavioral reasons, or just circumstances beyond their control, they don’t do as well in school as they might.

“It sometimes is hard to pick up,” she said. “I have a child who is on the autism spectrum, and he was not diagnosed until he was in sixth grade. And I did everything I could to prevent him from having to need an IEP, but there are children out there, and I think those children can fall through the cracks if there’s no communication between the families, the teachers, the educators themselves and the district. We need to work on that.”

Bell, who is currently serving as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, and in his life out of uniform works in logistics management, said he is running for the board to make education better for students like his own two children. He said he aims to improve how kids are doing in school, and that this first and foremost involves finding ways to improve the rate at which they show up to class.

“Attendance and academics are directly tied, they correlate directly,” he said. “If we have poor attendance, students aren’t in classrooms. If students aren’t in classrooms, they aren’t learning, their academic performance falls. ... We’ve got to get the students in the door and in their seats, consistently.”

Wednesday is the last day of the initial filing period for the two open school board seats. A final opportunity for candidates to declare for the race will be open from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 27, at the school district’s administrative headquarters, 1415 N. 26th St.

Tomorrow, the St. Joseph News-Press will feature other candidates for the two open school board seats. Also running are Harold Barr, Don Crabtree, Shawn Harper, Bradley Huett, Jennifer Kerns, Whitney Lanning and Joe Yegge.