CEL seats 5 new members of a 7-seat school board

[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.

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.

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]