Richfield School Board Candidates Discuss Achievement Gap, Priorites for District

—including a retired St. Paul elementary principal, a CPA, and a social media consultant—joined a host of community members at the Richfield City Council chambers Saturday morning for the League of Women Voters Richfield public forum to answer questions and discuss topics related to the district.

Questions touched on the candidates’ backgrounds, their priorities for the district, their support of a tax levy, how they would handle funding cuts and their opinions on year-round school.

Fifteen candidates—including two incumbents—are competing for three at-large seats, and two thirds of the candidates came to the forum, which was scheduled in two back-to-back groupings of five candidates each.

“I don’t think League of Women Voters Richfield has ever had so many candidates for one seat,” said Maureen Scaglia, the forum’s moderator.

Throughout the morning candidates discussed the importance of closing the “achievement gap” in test scores between white students and minorities.

“The schools have much more diversity than the community as a whole, but that’s changing,” said Todd Nollenberger, an incumbent candidate.

Another candidate, Christine Maleck, described her childrens’ school photos as looking “like the United Nations.” Several candidates emphasized the need for the socioeconomics of the district’s teachers and administrators to match that of the students.

“I think diversity needs to start at the top,” said Teresa Kruse. “We have 15 people running for board—we’re all white.”

There was also much discussion of the troubled finances of the district, and Nollenberger pointed out that the district’s fund balance had been depleted by the recession.

Candidate Zach Olson said that if cuts needed to be made, they would largely be personnel.

“The largest part of the budget is administration and staff,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to increase class size or cut teachers.

Of the 10 candidates in attendance, Olson was the only opponent of a tax levy, the largest disagreement in the morning’s civil and non-partisan debate.

“It’s not a money problem,” he said. “The U.S. is first in spending by far but 10th in math and reading and so on. We need to rethink our approach, and adding taxes to an already burdened economy isn’t going to help.”

Other candidates pointed out that state funding increases are not keeping pace with inflation and said that without increased funding, teachers would have to be laid off.

Those candidates not in attendance included incumbent board member Peter Toensing, who is an on-call physician. In addition, Scaglia said Woody Duvlea confirmed he would attend but was not present and Amy Cossette, Monica Holl Petrov and Scott Christenson had unspecified commitments preventing their attendance.

Richfield Patch will continue to cover the boad elections as we near election day in November and will have a series of individual Q&As with the candidates.