After a difficult budget year and the threatened closure of a school, four East Lansing school-board hopefuls look to fill the board’s two vacant seats.
William Donohue, Daphne O’Regan, Randy Bell and Brett Gillespie all look forward to possibly joining the board when the district needs them most.
All of the candidates have children who attend schools in the district, except for Gillespie, who has brothers in the district.
“I want to ask questions and increase communication,” said Gillespie, a recent East Lansing High School graduate.
“We need to make sure people are held accountable and reasonable responsibility occurs,” the 18-year-old said.
Gillespie on balancing studies at Lansing Community College with his duties on the board if he gets elected.
O’Regan is disturbed about the direction the district is heading.
“There are two things bothering me,” the 42-year-old East Lansing attorney said.
“I don’t think the school board is exercising enough oversight over central administration and I don’t think the district has a guiding philosophy. If they do, it’s not the guiding philosophy I believe, which is that children’s education and classroom instruction comes first.”
Donohue said he hopes to help the board adapt to the challenges of Proposal A.
The proposal, which was put into effect in 1994, was designed to provide tax relief to property owners while distributing public school funds to close revenue gaps among Michigan school districts.
Donohue is a 52-year-old MSU communication professor at MSU
Bell made several recommendations to the board as a citizen regarding budget cuts.
“They’ve got some problems with their budget, some problems related to quality in their educational effort,” the 46-year-old MSU faculty member said.
“I think I can help get in there and make good things happen.”
Bell served as a board member for another district and said his experience is much needed right now.
But Donohue contends the board needs to take a closer look at what takes precedence fiscally.
“The problem is not the amount of money that we have, the problem is always the priority for spending it,” he said.
“The question is, how do we structure our schools to function more efficiently?”
O’Regan said she will be able to change spending priorities to emphasize educational opportunities.
“When they came out with the new budget which was laying off a hundred teachers, I realized that classroom instruction must be their last priority,” O’Regan said.
“Not a priority, but definitely something they didn’t care about at all, and that’s something I hope I can change.”
More cuts should have been taken from administration and less from education, Gillespie said.
“I would take cuts as far away from students as possible,” he said.
