Eight vie for school board post

Eight local residents have applied for the impending vacancy on the Sisters School Board. All but one did so in the last two days leading to the July 21 filing deadline.

The group is so large the school board had to divide it for purposes of conducting 20-minute interviews with each candidate. Four were interviewed at a Monday night meeting and the other four will get their turns at a 6 p.m. meeting at the high school tonight (Wednesday, July 27). The board intends to make its choice at the end of tonight’s session.

Two of Monday’s group, Christine Jones and Paul Kaiser, had to be interviewed by speakerphone in the high school library office because they were out of town.

The current board expressed some surprise at the large number of applicants. But Board Chairman Jeff Smith said it was a “good group,” reflecting an impressive variety of backgrounds and credentials.

All candidates are being asked the same five questions, put to them in round-robin fashion by the five current school board members. The vacancy is occurring because one of the incumbents, Tom Coffield, is resigning from the board at the end of the month. The person appointed to replace him will serve the remaining two years of his four-year term.

The applicants interviewed Monday night were: Christine Jones, a former economist for the World Bank and now a consultant for the bank; Paul Kaiser, the director of health benefits for the Jeld-Wen corporation; Steve Mathews, a retired Beaverton high school teacher and coach; and Karly Drake-Lusby, the owner of Ivy Creek Wedding Services.

The remaining four, who will appear for the Wednesday meeting, are: Mike Boyle, the president of Glas-Weld Systems, a manufacturer of glass restoration equipment based in Bend; Jeff Haken, vice president for sales of Haken Cosmetics and a candidate in the May school board election, defeated by Rob Corrigan; Susan Metke, a recently retired Harney County kindergarten and first grade teacher; and Steve Rudinsky, a marketing and sales professional who works out of his home for Sun Microsystems.

The questions being put to the applicants inquire about their reasons for seeking the post and their views on school funding, the worth of the state’s CIM and CAM programs and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and the appropriate roles of the board, the superintendent and the public. The final question asks for responses to the notion that schools “should be run like a business” and the assertion that school spending contains “a lot of waste.”