Five sworn into office at Ringgold School Board meeting; former board president appointed to seat
Ringgold School Board 1
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
From left, Carol Flament, Lawrence Mauro, James Dodd and Sherrie Garry are sworn in as Ringgold School Board members Wednesday night.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Ringgold Education Association President Maria Degnan speaks during the school board meeting Wednesday night.
Five school board members were sworn into office at Ringgold School Board’s annual reorganization meeting, including director William Stein Jr., who had lost his bid for re-election in the November election.
Taking the oath of office were James Dodd, Carol Flament, Sherrie Garry and Lawrence Mauro. Stein was appointed by the newly seated board to fill a two-year at-large seat after Mauro, who won both a four-year Region 1 seat and the at-large seat, accepted the Region 1 seat.
Prior to Stein’s appointment, a motion by Mauro to accept applications from qualified district residents to fill the vacant seat failed.
About 35 residents attended the meeting. A handful walked out following the appointment of Stein, who had most recently served as president of the school board.
Flament was elected president, while Garry and Maureen Ott were elected first and second vice-presidents, respectively.
Also, Timothy Berggren was re-appointed solicitor.
The board set the date for its regular business meetings for the third Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m.
Also Wednesday, Superintendent Karen Polkabla said the school district earlier in the day sent Ringgold Education Association a list of possible negotiating dates.
President Maria Degnan addressed the school board Wednesday and said the union wants to hold bargaining sessions.
“Please bargain with us. Keep us in our classrooms and put all of this behind us,” said Degnan. “At this time, as you know, we are in mandatory nonbinding arbitration, but that does not forbid us from bargaining, and it shouldn’t. We can still meet, but we haven’t done so since we returned to the classroom. We can still get this done, and we are willing.”
Teachers gave a strike notice Oct. 13, and returned to their classrooms, as mandated by the state, in late November, following a 22-day strike.
In other business, the board hired David Kostelnik as a high school computer science teacher at a salary of $38,600.