Elk Mound school board candidate: Holly Sweeney
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ELK MOUND — Three candidates are on the ballot April 1 for two positions on the Elk Mound Board of Education.
Incumbents Jen Plemon and Holly Sweeney are on the ballot along with candidate Jon Voight.
The Colfax Messenger sent out questionnaires to the candidates.
Here are the answers to the questionnaire from Holly Sweeney.
• Tell us about your family: My husband Steve is a retired Math teacher and we have one adult daughter, Sarah Jakupciak, who is a 2017 graduate of Elk Mound. I have lived near the Wheaton ball fields for the last 32 years.
• What is or was your occupation?
I was a teacher in the Boyceville Community Schools for 28 years and continue to substitute there when I can. I was a 5th grade teacher for the majority of my classroom teaching days and then worked as a Reading Specialist and Title I resource teacher.
• What is your educational background?
I graduated from Two Rivers High School in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul. Then I attended and graduated from University of Wisconsin Eau Claire with an elementary teaching degree. Eventually I earned a masters degree in Reading, also from UWEC.
• Why did you decide to run again for a position on the Board of Education?
I am proud to be a part of the Elk Mound community and glad to be serving on the board. I spent my work life in public schools and I think public schools are crucial to our democracy. I want to ensure that our Elk Mound students have the best staff teaching them, premium resources in their classrooms, and great facilities to foster learning.
• What do you believe to be the two biggest issues facing the school district?
First, school funding is an issue that needs to be addressed at both the state and federal levels. The 1975 federal law promised that the government would kick in an annual allocation to the special education effort equal to 40 percent of what states were spending on it themselves. Presently at the federal level the support for public schools is below 12 percent and 29 percent at the state level. Both have drastically fallen short of their promises and have passed this burden on to local taxpayers.
To address the school funding issue I plan to continue to communicate with my elected state and federal representatives about the needs of the Elk Mound schools and the problems that we are facing. Inviting our legislators to come and visit our schools and continuing to dialogue with them is imperative. Another thing I can do is to attend and testify at the Joint Finance Public Hearings so I can tell Elk Mound’s story.
Another issue that we need to work on is retaining and hiring the best staff possible to work with our kids. There is a shortage of educational staff and support professionals in our state and we need to make sure we have the best and the brightest staff in our schools. One way to do this is to encourage talented high school students in Elk Mound to consider becoming educators. Seasoned teachers could mentor or partake in apprenticeship type programs that could foster more new educators. Another way would be to create programs that would allow our current support professionals to pursue obtaining their teaching credentials.
• How would you go about increasing transparency for the Elk Mound school district?
At this point the school board minutes are in the monthly newsletter delivered in the mail and the online newsletter also. This could be a topic of discussion for the school board in the future. I think continuing to communicate with the community is the goal of the current Elk Mound school board. We try to have a brief “From the Board” article each month to highlight an educational project or topic.
Live-streaming might be something to consider. It’s also important to make sure everyone is comfortable in that setting. It seems quite possible that the dynamics of board, administrative, and onsite audience interaction could be influenced with camera recording; not necessarily a bad thing but certainly an important consideration.
• Anything else you would like voters to know?
I would like voters to know that the Elk Mound schools have a wonderful staff. We have had a nationally recognized school board (Magna Award winning board in 2008 and 2014); a state special education teacher of the year in 2007 and a state superintendent of the year in 2014. Recently our guidance staff has been recognized by our state’s Department of Public Instruction for their leadership and exemplary student support. Quality staff makes for quality education. The Elk Mound community should be very proud of our schools.
