School Board Election is November 2: Meet the Candidates

The school and city election is scheduled for November 2 and this election cycle we have 3 seats on the school board up for election. There are 4 candidates running for these seats and include incumbents Brenda Klenk and Matt Sallee who are both seeking a second term on the board, as well as Shannon Ingamells and Amy Thole. Incumbent Traci Trunck has decided not to seek a third term in office. Look for Traci's reflection on her service to the board in an upcoming column!

Today's post is a bit longer than normal due to the information that is being shared regarding these candidates. I encourage you to please take time to read the entire article to learn about these community members running for the board. 

Brenda Klenk (Incumbent) 

Brenda was born and raised in Ossian, Iowa and a proud graduate of Allamakee County Schools. After graduation, she attended the American Institute of Business in Des Moines and earned an Associate's Degree in Court Reporting. She is employed by the State of Iowa Judicial branch and most days can be found at the Black Hawk County Courthouse.

Brenda and her husband Ken have been married for 26 years and have three daughters and one son in law, all proud Hudson graduates with the exception of Amelia who has just started her freshman year at Hudson High School. Ellie and her husband Caleb reside in Honolulu, Hawaii where Caleb is stationed in the Air Force. After graduating from Iowa State, Annelise is now attending grad school at Drake. Brenda and Ken keep very busy with their three dogs, and keeping up with Amelia who is very active in school activities that include multiple sports teams.

Brenda is seeking a second term because she feels passionate about being a voice for her neighbors, friends, and community. She believes it's not enough to sit around and talk about what you want to happen. It's better to volunteer your time and be part of the process.

When considering the greatest challenge facing education in Iowa, Brenda recognizes that mental health issues in our school systems has become prevalent, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, for students as well as staff. She says that "While we must continue to move forward and work through the fears and obstacles COVID-19 has created, we must find ways to help, encourage, and support our students and staff so we can keep the classroom focus on education."

At the local level, Brenda believes one of our challenges is giving our students multiple career opportunities so they are ready for whatever path they choose upon graduation. Having classes and hands-on experiences while in high school will give our students a greater understanding to make educated decisions about their future and hopefully lead them to successful careers.

She hopes to continue representing the Hudson community with integrity and assure our citizens that there is a great deal of thought and consideration put into the decisions made as a board member. She hopes to be part of improvements to our school's learning environment, educational programming, as well as our facilities so we are ready to meet the needs of all current and future students.

Matt Sallee (Incumbent)

Matt grew up in Indianola, Iowa and graduated from Indianola High School in 1990. He went on to attend the University of Northern Iowa and graduated from UNI with a Marketing Degree in 1994. He is currently employed by Stanley Black and Decker and serves as the Director of Product Management for Metal Storage. He was a long time employee of Waterloo Industries prior to being acquired by Stanley Black and Decker in 2017. He really enjoys his job and gets to work with a team to develop world class storage products for brands such as CRAFTSMAN, DEWALT, STANLEY and MAC Tools.

His family  has been proud to call Hudson home for 24 years. His wife Dee also graduated from UNI and works in the High School as the Athletic/Guidance Assistant. They have two wonderful daughters who were both extremely active while in the Hudson school system. His oldest, Madison, graduated from Hudson in 2017 and UNI in 2021. She now works for VGM as a Project Event Coordinator on the Moxie Team. Kylee graduated from Hudson in 2021 and is now a Freshman at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD where she is studying Business and a is member of the Track and Field Team. 

As an incumbent, Matt is seeking a second term on the board in an effort to give back to the school and community that has treated his family so well. The Hudson school system has opened up many doors for his daughters and successfully prepared them for their future endeavors. He enjoys being part of a team that will ensure these opportunities will be made available for all Hudson students in the future.

Matt believes the pandemic has created the biggest challenge facing education in Iowa. The debates over in-person vs. online education and masks vs. no masks have created a huge divide in some communities. He also points out that Hudson faces the same challenges created by the pandemic. With the exception of the state wide shutdown, he is proud that Hudson students have attended school in person the entire time since the pandemic began. The staff and students do an excellent job of mitigating the risks.

If he is successful in securing a second term, Matt will bring the same common sense approach to the board that was demonstrated during his first term. He looks forward to working with the larger team to continue to improve our facilities and learning environment in order to provide our students, staff and community the best education in the area.

Shannon Ingamells

Shannon grew up in Cedar Falls and holds a BA Degree in Community Health Education from the University of Northern Iowa and an Associate Degree in Nursing (RN) from Inver Hills Community College. She is currently employed by Unitypoint at Home and has varied experience in school nursing and health issues during her time working as a nursing manager with schools in the Cedar Valley.

Shannon and her husband Wade, a Hudson native, have been married for 20 years. They lived in Minnesota when they were first married. Shortly afterward, they moved back to Iowa and have been happy to call Hudson home for the past 18 years.  Their oldest daughter Emily, graduated from HHS this past May and is a freshman at the University of Iowa. Their son Zach, is a sophomore at HHS. They have 2 dogs - a 10 year old Boxer named Max and a 7 year old Bassador named Roger. 

Shannon has been thinking about running for the Hudson School Board since her children were young. She decided this year to run because she feels her experience in health care, school nursing, child and adolescent health, pediatric nursing, and mental health would bring a lot to the board. She has an interest in educational law as well as collaborating with others to arrive at the best outcome. She is accustomed to working in unique situations with an adverse and complex set of barriers. She has extensive background working with children with special health care needs in the school setting and collaborating with the AEA. She believes it takes a village to raise a child and wants to help impact the educational experiences our children in Hudson have. 

Shannon believes in the uniqueness of each child and that it can be challenging for educators to find that uniqueness about each child and meet each child and their families "where they're at". At the same time believes if those unique attributes of each child can be found and lifted up to help them reach their full potential their opportunities in life will be limitless. 

As a smaller school district, Shannon feels there may not always be the opportunity to offer a myriad of educational options and activities to students. For instance, her daughter was able to take the CNA course through the Waterloo Career Center her senior year. This was an amazing experience and sparked an interest to pursue a degree in nursing at the University of Iowa. It was a bit challenging to make this work into her schedule her senior year due to the differences in class scheduling at Hudson vs. Waterloo Schools. But, in spite of those challenges we were able to work it out and create a very positive experience. She feels more students should be allowed to explore options such as this to open many more doors of opportunity for them. 

If elected, Shannon hopes to make a positive impact by the choices and decisions that are made as a board member.  She has experience working in schools with positivity programs in place and the energy you feel when you walk into those schools is beyond compare. She hopes to accomplish making Hudson Schools a place where students want to learn and teachers want to teach, where they wake up every morning and are excited to be there.  She is not saying this isn't the case now. But, she feels with all that is going on in the world currently students and teachers are facing the greatest challenges they may have ever had in their lifetime. There are so many concerns with mental health issues, illness, loss, etc., etc. that we need to find new and unique ways to live, love, learn, and teach. 

Amy Thole

A lifelong Hudson resident and the daughter of Tom and Christy Lichty, Amy grew up on a farm outside of Hudson. She is a 2008 graduate of Hudson High School and holds degrees from Hawkeye Community College and the University of Northern Iowa. She is currently employed at Hawkeye Community College where she serves as the Associate Director of Athletics. 

Amy and her husband Michael have a one year old daughter, Charlotte. She is drawn to board service in Hudson because of the way Hudson shaped her life during her formative years. She grew up attending Hudson Community Schools and graduated in 2008. The education she received at Hudson gave her a strong foundation to continue on to higher education. Traveling around the world and living out of state, provided the clarity needed to move back to Iowa and start a family. The reason she would like the opportunity to be on the Hudson Community School Board is to give back to Hudson Schools so my children can have the same positive experience she did.

As an administrator at a postsecondary institution, Amy recognizes that mental health is one of the greatest challenges facing educators in Iowa. She feels that it is paramount that we do all we can to connect students with services that will enable them to be successful in life. 

At the local level, Amy is interested in helping address the challenges Hudson will face in the near future as district enrollment grows. As class sizes increase, it will be important to ensure that we continue to provide the smaller class sizes that make our school district so appealing. Amy also realizing that it will be important to ensure we have the programming necessary to meet the needs of our growing community, ranging from early childhood education all the way to college and career readiness. She hopes her service to the board will add a solution oriented voice to address the complex issues facing the district while planning for the future. 

Transitional Kindergarten?

Preschool after hours: Quite now but not for long!

Prior to this school year, we have accommodated 'young five year old' students in our preschool program. At parent request, we were able to allow those families the option of a second year of preschool if they [parents] thought they weren't quite ready for kindergarten. It wasn't really an ideal situation because we had to charge these families tuition and program isn't really designed that way. Nevertheless, we had the room so it really didn't make much sense to have open slots going unfilled if someone wanted to make use of the opening. The caveat of course is that a five year old can't take the place of a four year old, which is where we found ourselves at the beginning of this school year.

Our preschool program has a limit of 40 students, which is based largely on staffing limitations. At the same time, because our preschool program is fully inclusive a few slots need to be held in reserve to accommodate qualifying students that emerge throughout the course of the school year. Some children become eligible at age 3, and once those students become eligible we have to serve them. This, factored with enrollment growth has created a pressure point in our early childhood program. The preschool program is now completely full, and those families with 'young five year old's' were faced with a choice: kindergarten or a private provider. Luckily our community has good options for families so everyone was able to find a soft landing spot. But in reality we are to the point where we need to consider the structure of our comprehensive early childhood program. 

Last spring the early childhood faculty approached me about implementing a program that would be designed specifically to fill this gap. Often referred to as transitional or pre-kindergarten programs, they are becoming more popular around the state. While it wasn't feasible to consider implementing a program like this on such short notice, it is being studied this year and could be a possibility for the 2022-2023 school year. 

There are caveats of course. For starters, in essence what we would be doing is opening a 4th section of kindergarten. Even though in practice it would function as a transitional kindergarten program, those students would be classified as kindergarten students for state reporting purposes. In our preliminary discussions with the DE, they aren't all that interested in the transitional kindergarten concept. Nevertheless at the end of the day this does become a local issue. The other, perhaps more pertinent unknown is having enough students to actually make a transitional kindergarten fiscally responsible and feasible. 

To answer this question, it is wise to look at our enrollment trajectory and trendline data. Our kindergarten enrollment is projected using a five year rolling average of the past five years. Based on this estimate, kindergarten classes are projected to be 57 over the next five years. However, this year we have 64 and when correcting for those who were expected to attend and then later chose a different option, our kindergarten class would have been over 70 students. At 72, we could comfortably have four sections of kindergarten at 18 a piece, with one of which being a transitional program. Naturally though we don't anticipate an even distribution across the programs, but this makes the math simple.

As I look at enrollment trends that include both residential enrollment growth and open enrollment it is entirely possible that my projections are understated. By how much remains an open question. While today's post focused on the mechanics and fiscal side of the issue, we will also be discussing the programmatic aspects of a transitional kindergarten soon. Nevertheless, we will begin the process of examining our early childhood program in the coming weeks. I look forward to the discussion, not only with our professional teaching staff but with families who might be impacted and have an interest in this program. If you are interested in being involved in this work, please reach out! 

Expanding Career and Technical Education

Iowa high schools are required to offer specific courses, deliver content in a diverse array of disciplines, and employ people with certain credentials in order to be an accredited public high school. Known as the Chapter 12 accreditation standards, in some small schools they can be a tough hill to climb when there aren't enough students to justify a particular position; and become even more so in a tough labor market. Yet, one area that is a challenge for larger school districts as well as smaller school districts is in the area of career and technical education (CTE).

In this branch of secondary education, high schools must offer and teach in a minimum of four career areas, with complete 'strands' or programs of study in each strand. In Hudson, those four strands are Family and Consumer Science, Industrial Technology, Agriculture, and Business. Our specific challenge has been attracting and retaining quality employees in these areas. Why? Well largely because some of these positions have not been full time teaching positions. In fact up until this school year the four components of our CTE program have been served by 3.25 teachers. We didn't have enough students to fill out a full schedule so it has been difficult to justify a full time teacher. So we resorted to part time positions and sharing some positions with other school districts.

The side effect of this strategy is constant turnover with no ability to build a program that students want to invest their time in, especially if they can expect a new teacher to come along in a year with a philosophy and skill set that is different than the last teacher. The problem becomes even more challenging when the labor pool is not deep to begin with, which was the dilemma we were faced with when our Family and Consumer Science teacher moved on to another district after the end of last year. Who could blame her? The position she was filling for us was shared with a neighboring school district, where half the day was spent in Hudson and the other half at our neighboring district. Now, if there were a deep bench of teachers with this credential, we would have been able to call someone up and keep on moving. But the fact that there isn't even a bench to begin with makes the issue all the more challenging. Plus, it makes shared positions between two school districts not all that attractive. 

Even though our previous teacher resigned early enough for us to get to the market, it wasn't fast enough. The talent pipeline for the 2021-2022 school year had exactly 4 teachers in it. The market demanded 26. We very quickly found ourselves a day late and a dollar short. Luckily we were able to coax a former instructor out of retirement to serve in an interim part-time capacity this school year.

That, coupled with a renewed emphasis on the governor's Future Ready Iowa initiative provided a jumping off point for some bold decisions in our career and technical education program. First, we have gone to the market and secured a full time Family and Consumer Science teacher for next year. This preservice teacher is finishing their preparation program right now and is very eager to join our faculty. We anticipate our FCS program next year to focus on industry standards spanning a broad spectrum of careers that students will be excited to explore and experience.

Beginning this school year we have also expanded opportunities for students to engage in real world career exploration by participating in job shadowing experiences that can lead to both internships and apprenticeships. Students participating in the 'Career Exploration Opportunity' course have the chance to develop employability skills, learn more about a career that interests them, and create a training pathway to that career. While this course of study is credit bearing, we anticipate some of these experiences will eventually yield a paycheck for this next generation of our workforce. 

Finally, we are in the very beginning stages of developing a computer science curriculum that when fully developed will provide even more opportunities for our students to explore a rewarding career that truly embodies Future Ready Iowa. All of this means that next year will be the first time in well over a decade where the district will employ four full time career and technical education teachers. We are able to make these strategic investments in our students because of growing enrollment, a strong financial position, and a school board that sees the value of ensuring our students are prepared for the next phase of their lives when they leave our campus: be that college or career ready!