CEL seats 5 new members of a 7-seat school board
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[May 06, 2013]
During a special meeting on
Friday, a new board of education was seated at Chester-East Lincoln.
With five of seven of the board members coming in new, it
represented some big changes.
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Members of the previous board present to begin the meeting were
Kenny Golden, Ben Roland, Mark Mathon and Kenda Kitner. Golden and
Roland are the only two returning board members, Roland by recent
re-election. Golden, who was president, has two years remaining on
his seat. The new board members who took their seats on Friday
were Jeff Brooks, Lori Birnbaum, Tish Podunajec, Randy Wolf and
Jason Toft.
The newly seated board voted on the positions of president, vice
president and board secretary. Brooks was chosen as the board's
president, Birnbaum as vice president and Podunajec as secretary.
The three were the only nominations for the respective positions.
There was a small issue with the seating of one of the new board
members. Jason Toft holds another position for CEL. He is a girls
basketball coach during basketball season. Due to a conflict in his
contract for the school, and with legal advice from Chris Miller,
Toft is temporarily resigning as coach while the contract is
examined. The conflict in question concerns the amount of work that
Toft would put into his duties, as there is a limitation on how much
money a board member can earn through working at the school.
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Toft said that while he was not expecting to temporarily resign
on the night of Friday's meeting, he understood that it was the
easiest way to deal with this situation for now. He also said he did
not want to resign from the board (the alternative solution), as he
was only recently elected and had not been seated before Friday.
Before the meeting's adjournment, the new board voted to postpone
an executive session. The session would have included a
self-evaluation of sorts in the form of a presentation by Larry
Dirks, director of the Illinois Association of School Boards. Dirks
said that such a presentation is usually given to new school boards
in order to help members start off on the right foot. The
presentation was postponed due to a time conflict for some of the
new members.
All of the new board members were present, as was Superintendent
Jennifer Hamm.
[By DEREK HURLEY]
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