Six candidates vying for seats on AASD board
From Mirror staff reports
POSTED: October 25, 2007
The departure of two current Altoona Area school board members opens the door for new voices to lead the district as it enters a new era with a new junior high.
The candidates are James Walstrom (R), Timothy Lucas (cross-filed) and incumbents Maryann Joyce Bistline, Margaret Hendricks and Mary Kimmel (all cross-filed).
The Democratic primary was not contested. Liang Bartkowiak, Hendricks, Bistline, Lucas and Kimmel, ran for the five seats in that primary.
Incumbents Walter Betar, a former Altoona Area High School principal, and Dave Francis, a former Altoona school board president, will leave this year.
Blending two junior highs into one may cause a few problems for all involved.
Security and safety are concerns, as well as blending duplicate programs such as sports teams.
Board members originally proposed two sports teams and two bands but later agreed to plan for a unified front for extracurricular activities.
The school is scheduled to open for the 2008-09 school year. The district plans to place classrooms for each grade on different floors of the school.
The new board also will face issues such as property taxes, curriculum, a projected decline in enrollment and No Child Left Behind progress.
Three of the four respondents to a Mirror questionnaire referred to the “fiscal responsibility” of the board for more than 20 years.
The board raised property taxes once in 22 years. None of the candidates favored a tax increase.
With a decline in a enrollment, the new board may be forced to close a school.
Two current school board members said the district monitors enrollment and that such a prediction is impossible to make, while Walstrom finds the lack of business opportunities in the area the cause for the decline.
Lucas and Bartkowiak would like to get to the root of the problem, however, examining the factors contributing to the decline. Bistline does not see consolidation in the future and believes neighborhood schools are good for students.
Special needs students struggling to test at the same level as other students create a challenge to reach the necessary annual progress in No Child Left Behind, Kimmel said.
Hendricks stated that the district is working on the problem and that schools are developing “action plans to target the learning needs causing problems” for the special needs students.
Bartkowiak blames No Child Left Behind’s policy and would like to figure out how to convince the federal government that it “needs to be refined.”
