Lebanon
Eight candidates are vying for seats on the nine-person board, including two incumbents. The top three vote-getters citywide will be elected to the three-year positions.
School Board incumbents Richard Milius and Ralph Horak are both hoping to retain their seats on the board, while Adam Nemeroff, Chris Lamontagne, Jason Finley, Jennifer Mansfield, Erin Madory and Joshua Henderson are running for first terms.
School Board member Kathleen Berger, who has served since 2010, chose not to run for re-election this year.
Milius, 66, was first appointed to the board in 2013 and now serves as its vice chairman. A lecturer in Norwich University’s chemistry department, he hopes to continue on the board in service to his community.
“I think my motivation has always been service,” Milius said. “I really believe that people have an obligation to contribute to their community in some way.”
During his time on the board, Milius said, he’s helped implement new standards into the elementary and middle schools’ math curricula, a change that is now beginning in Lebanon’s English departments.
“Of course, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education is a big deal for me,” Milius said. “That’s going to be a big priority for us as soon as the English project is underway.”
The district finances and building safety also are major focuses Milius hopes to address going forward. He’s consistently advocated for the district to draw down its fund balance and create tighter budgets, and at times asked the district to review security measures in schools.
Horak also is hoping to keep his seat on the board. He was initially appointed in late January to fill a vacancy, and now is running to serve a full term.
“One thing I really took away, and it was great to have the two months (on the board), was the realization that school these days is very different from school in my time,” the 48-year-old Horak said.
Safety and security weren’t something people worried about when he was a child, but it’s something the board takes very seriously now, Horak said. He’s also in support of new technologies being incorporated into education instruction, which wasn’t available in the past.
Horak owns several rental properties in Lebanon and said he hopes to balance expanding educational opportunities with what taxpayers can afford.
“It’s a real challenge. (The budget) is interesting to me and I think I can do a really good job (working on it),” he said.
Lebanon resident Nemeroff, 28, is running for his first term on the board. He moved to the city in 2014 and currently works as an instructional designer at Dartmouth College, where he helps faculty implement technology into their teaching.
“I’ve always been interested in local school governance and local politics,” Nemeroff said, adding that his interest dates back to time observing local government while earning his Eagle Scout badge.
Nemeroff said he’d like to use his experience to help the district develop new programs. He’s also focused on using data to help solve problems and looking at the outcomes of certain educational practices.
Nemeroff said he also has experience with budgets and said he would be fiscally mindful that education has to both benefit students and taxpayers alike.
“I’m truly excited about the prospect of serving my community,” Nemeroff said, adding he wants to help explore how to create the best learning experiences for children.
Lamontagne, 52, said he’s also running to give back to the community. His family moved to Lebanon in 2012, before briefly living in Quechee for a year and then coming back.
“It didn’t take us long to find out we really liked Lebanon and wanted to move back there,” he said.
Lamontagne works as a social worker at the Vermont Permanency Initiative, specializing in helping children and families, and said he hopes to bring his experiences on the job to the School Board.
Lamontagne said he wants “to maintain the vision that I think has been established” in Lebanon, including the creation of extended learning opportunities. He said agriculture, arts and other forms of education are just as important as traditional classroom instruction.
He also hopes to safeguard public education against political uncertainty after the recent election.
“There are a lot of questions about what the future of public schools are going to look like,” he said. “My position is unwavering in the advocacy of children. Nobody’s going to be sold downriver.”
Henderson, a teacher at the Croydon Village School, also said he hopes to preserve Lebanon’s public education system. With Croydon at the center of an ongoing school choice debate in the Granite State, he sees support for local schools as an important initiative.
“Just having lived here for a while now and being a teacher myself, I really see the value in public education and trying to support it,” said Henderson, 37.
He also hopes to bring his experience and diverse background in education to the board. During the summer, Henderson teaches classes at L.L. Bean’s Outdoor Discovery School in paddleboarding and kayaking. He’s also led snowshoeing classes.
Furthering education and a transition to high-quality instruction after students leave Lebanon’s elementary schools also is important to Henderson, as are the arts.
“It’s so diverse, the opportunities that are there,” he said, adding that he wants to make sure those programs “are still a priority and available.”
Madory said she was inspired to run for the School Board after it decided not to fund two positions at the Hanover Street School in the 2017-18 budget. She advocated for both of the positions, which were restored during the district’s deliberative session, and said her time spent going to meetings convinced her to enter the race.
“I felt that I had something to offer,” said Madory, a Spanish teacher at the Frances C. Richmond Middle School in Hanover. “My experience in education, I thought, would make me an ideal candidate.”
Madory, 39, said the district currently is moving in a good direction. The administrators and teachers are great, she said, and deserve community support.
The taxpayers and parents also deserve to be heard from the board, Madory said.
“I really believe that the School Board position is to listen to the community and ensure that everyone’s voice is heard,” she said.
If he’s elected, Finley said he hopes to use his first year on the board to listen and gain an understanding of Lebanon’s challenges.
“Initially, I would not plan on coming in with any sort of agenda,” he said. “I want to understand what (the board is) making decisions on, then I can help support that.”
Finley, 45, works as a co-op coordinator at the Randolph Technical Career Center, where he helps students gain experience for future careers through work-based learning. But he also has business experience and previously was employed in the financial services sector.
Schools need to focus more on creating programs where students learn transferable skills, he said. Finley said he would like to see Lebanon schools encourage students leaving high school to not only pursue a four-year degree, but also enter apprenticeships, military service and other forms of job training.
Finley’s work also includes discussions on implicit bias and what it does to female and minority students, and he’s interested in bringing similar conversations to Lebanon.
Mansfield, 46, said she was encouraged to run for the School Board by two incumbents, Wendy Hall and Tammy Begin.
“It seems like a great time to participate and give back to the schools that have been so great to my kids,” said Mansfield, an administrative supervisor at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center who works in telemedicine.
If elected, she’ll work to keep existing special education programs operating well, and promote students’ exposure to the arts, music and sports.
“I think the kids need to have exposure to a lot of things to make them great people and prepared for adult life,” Mansfield said.
At work, she’s helped organize space in the new Williamson Translational Research Building, and said she’s prepared to bring that experience consensus building to the School Board.
“I think I can help with that organizational part and looking at all the pieces” before making a decision, she said.
Also on the ballot, voters will be asked to approve a $42.1 million operating budget for the 2017-18 school year, an increase of $1.5 million over the current year’s. If the proposed budget is voted down, a default budget of $42.5 million will take effect.
A new, three-year collective bargaining agreement with the Lebanon Support Staff also will be on the ballot. If it’s approved, the contract calls for $39,116 in additional costs next year, followed by $138,390 in 2018-19 and $152,744 in 2019-20.
Voting for city and school offices will take place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Tuesday at Kilton Public Library in West Lebanon (Ward 1), United Methodist Church (Ward 2) and City Hall (Ward 3).
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
Correction
Lebanon resident Jennifer Mansfield — who works as an administrative supervisor in telemedicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center — said she was encouraged to run for the School Board by two incumbents, Wendy Hall and Tammy Begin. School Board member Kathleen Berger, who is not running for re-election, is part of the nursing faculty at River Valley Community College. An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified who encouraged Mansfield to run and incorrectly described the jobs held by Mansfield and Berger.