BREWER, Maine — Four of the six people running for two seats on the school board say having a hand in who is hired to replace departing Superintendent Daniel Lee is one of the major reasons they are seeking election.
The seats of Chairwoman Amanda Bost and member William Birch, who both decided not to run, are up for grabs, and Mark Beal, Mark Chambers, Mark Farley, Kevin Forrest, Dani O’Halloran and Tyler Smith are on the ballot.
A meet-the-candidates forum will take place Tuesday at Brewer Community School. A meet-and-greet with light refreshments will begin at 6 p.m., followed by the candidates forum at 6:30 p.m. in the performing arts center.
In addition to the six running for school board, longtime City Council member Larry Doughty and Mayor Jerry Goss are running for their seats on the council against local mail carrier Matthew Vachon.
Ruth Marie Spellman, a former school board member, is the lone candidate for the one open Brewer High trustees seat.
Chambers, who has 12 years of school board experience, and Farley, who served for nine years, both have experience with selecting school department leadership.
“There are a lot of major decisions coming up in regard to the board, including a new superintendent, and I think my experience will come in handy when interviewing those candidates,” said Farley, 56, of Birch Wood Boulevard.
Chambers, 52, of Sunset Strip, serves as a Brewer High School district trustee and also was an at-large director for the Maine School Board Association from 2009 to 2011. He helped to select the last two superintendents.
Newcomers O’Halloran, no age provided, of Clover Lane, and Smith, 44, of Oak Grove Drive, also say the superintendent search is crucial for Brewer’s future.
“I think it’s important to find the right person,” said Smith, who owns Greenway Equipment Sales in Bangor and Ellsworth. “I have three kids in the school district, two kids at the community school and one at high school. I’m a Brewer grad, and I’m interested in how they are preparing kids for jobs.”
O’Halloran said the school department is in a crucial situation.
It’s important to identify “the right individual who will provide the strong leadership needed to guide our wonderful educators in their mission to help shape the future of our children,” she said. “Competition in today’s workforce has never been greater, and we owe it to the students in our community to prepare them for that battle.”
The other candidates for the school board — Forrest, 49, Gettysburg Avenue and Beal, 52, of Glenwood Avenue — are fathers with children still in school.
“One focus would be continuity and consistency of our education,” said Forrest, a 1982 graduate. He also seeks consistency “between the same teachers at the same grade level” and wants to improve school facilities and programs and teacher compensation “while working within our current budget system. I pay enough myself and I get it.”
Beal, owner of Beal Real Estate and a local coach and volunteer, said his children asked him why he was running.
“I’d like to see some parents on the school board,” people who are “doing it for the kids’ sake, for our kids’ future,” he responded.
All the candidates indicated they will be at Tuesday night’s forum, which will also include a discussion on the upcoming referendum to ban fireworks in the city’s most-populated areas.
I hope we elect a school board that is forceful enough to defend itself. Holding a citizen referendum to decide if the next superintendent must live in the city of Brewer was absurd. If a number of these candidates see picking the next head of our schools as a high priority they will have their work cut out for them. The most desirable candidates will more than likely not want to uproot their families if they are from a neighboring city or town.
Perry Antone, public safety director and a very qualified man, is not required to live in Brewer. Some of those that pushed the residency requirement gave the “high” pay as the reason. Many educators choose not to live in the city or town they serve. You and your family come under an undesirable microscope in regards to your personal life.
I would like to see a list of these names with a R or D after each.
I’d rather hear from their own mouths what they know about education. Do they have backgrounds that make them qualified to make decisions that impact our kid’s futures?Isn’t partisanship the biggest reason that our government seems unable to accomplish anything?
Look for a teacher in the brewer school system that did not grow up in a well to do home . Who worked hard . Had the luck to have someone advocate for them and is caring about the needs of the at risk kids. It is hard to understand if you have not lived it. The upper middle class kid will most likely do well anyways. Lets not be like Bangor who seem to care more about the needs of the elite than the kids from the other side of the tracks.
Dan Lee, the current and retiring superintendent,did not grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth. If you do a little checking, there are many others.
Yes but not Webb.
You make a lot of excellent points with you postings. However, try to let go of some of those ill feelings that you seem to have against those who grew up in a better situation than you. I grew up in house where the pipes froze in the winter and meals were often very basic. My parents never bought more a couple of bucks worth of gas at a time. We never took a vacation or received anything extra other than our birthday or at Christmas. But somehow my siblings and I got to college and made a pretty good life for our families. I truly feel that growing up a little hard helped me make my way. I wouldn’t trade my childhood with any of the so called “rich ” kids.
Excellent point . You make it is not about Money so much as in how someone was raise . My feeling is reality is subjective based on perspective . Bangor dose a lot of great things . Some not so great but they do there best to not draw attention to that . Seems like they do a lot more for your kids if you advocate for them . Easy for a kid to slip through the cracks with out parents that will . Then they seem to blame it on bad parents like it the kids fault. So kids will do well no matter what but those are not as common as we tend to think.