Five candidates share vision for East Knox School Board ahead of Nov. 4 election

East Knox School District residents got an opportunity to hear from five candidates during a Meet the Candidates Night at the Apple Valley Clubhouse on Oct. 9.

Joshua Beltz, Ron Bostic, Randy Reese, Jared Stein and Melissa Tomlinson spoke about their candidacy and answered questions during the event. Voters in the district have the opportunity on Nov. 4 to select three of those candidates for the board.

Each candidate began with a two-minute opportunity to talk about their background and reasons why they want to be an East Knox School Board member.

Beltz said, “I’m basically just a dad who loves kids, loves to coach ball, do anything I can to help kids and this is a great opportunity to do that.”

Bostic noted he and his wife are East Knox grads and that most of his family have either graduated from East Knox or are still in the district. The retiree from the Energy Cooperative has also served on the board before.

“I’d like to keep the good teachers/adminstrators we have. Give them support they need to do their job so these kids coming out of East Knox have what it takes to make it in life,” he said.

Reese is a current board member that has coached at the school for many years.

“As a board we try to do what’s right. Just try to do the best we can and make this school something you can be proud of,” he said.

Stein is an Apple Valley resident that has two kids enrolled in the district and has coached area youths for many years.

“(I’m) running for this to help develop and help create an atmosphere for our students and staff. We need solutions and to work hard to move in the right direction,” Stein said.

Tomlinson is also a graduate of East Knox and a PTO officer.

“This district means a lot to me. I know how much care and heart and effort goes into making it great. This community has shaped me into who I am and I want to give back in a way that helps shape our future kids,” Tomlinson said. “My focus is simple – we need strong academics and a supportive culture. I believe our students deserve classrooms that challenge them and teachers who feel valued and supported. I’m running to listen and to learn and to help make every decision we make as a board reflect what’s best for the students – now and years from now.”

The candidates were asked questions such as challenges the district faces, before and after school programs, funding and staff/teacher retention. The biggest challenge many of the candidates felt was keeping and recruiting good teachers and staff.

“You can’t turn over your staff. Your current staff gets exhausted training a new staff every year. You can’t consistently turn over teachers, staff each year. Our median salary is $44,000 and go down the road to Danville and it’s $53,000,” Beltz said. “It starts with wages, but you have to have conversation with your staff. See what these teachers want. Ask them and then follow through with it. if you just ask and the teachers don’t see results, they’re not going to stay.”

Bostic said that is one of the big reasons he’s running for the board.

“When I ran for the board years ago, we were having a lot of turnover of teachers and staff. I really have an issue with that because you lose so much experience when that happens. When we get a good teacher in, they don’t stay, whether it’s for money or what it is. I don’t like to see turnover,” he said. “If I get elected, I’ll find out what those issues are and see if I can solve it. Another issue I have a problem with is I’m not sure we at EK take care of our teachers the way we should. We need more aides, especially in the elementary.”

Stein agreed that losing staff is the main thing, and believes they should find out why that is happening and do something about it.

“People leave their jobs for better opportunities or different bosses. We need to evaluate why. Is it primarily money, a cultural thing? We need to attack it as a number one priority,” he said.

Tomlinson said it comes down to feeling valued as a staff member.

“We lose so many great teachers every year. We truly need to figure out why we are losing so many of these super valuable teachers to other districts. Jesse Busenberg, our treasurer, just told us at the meeting that we lose more students than we enroll into our district. When I graduated, we had 1,300 students. Now we are down to 950. It’s a huge decline,” Tomlinson said. “We have to show the teachers and the aides and all of our staff they are valued. People don’t want to go to work if they feel the work is not important to a boss and the people you work with. If you’re constantly being told you’re doing it wrong, it’s tough.”

Reese believes that getting the staff and students what they need is the key to making East Knox a gold standard in both staff and those graduating.

“I think the biggest challenge is keeping our standard what we already have and gaining more ground. We’ve got to get our report cards up, and I know they are working really hard on that. We have good people ... you’ve got to have some retention,” Reese said. “Academics are very important. We need to get them everything they need. Get them ready for life – that should be our goal.”