Five candidates plan to battle for four open school board seats in Rutland this Town Meeting Day. While the candidates’ priorities differ, they all agree that dealing with the high school mascot is not one of them.
Kevin Kiefaber and Cathy Solsaa are the two incumbents on the ballot. Each has served one three-year term on the board.
Ryan Carney and Heather Hauke, two other candidates on the ballot, have never served on the school board, but Hauke ran for it last year.
One candidate, Mary McDonald, did not respond to phone calls and messages late last week nor this week. But the four other candidates agreed that the high school mascot debate is finished, and each is excited to turn toward other issues.
A running argument for years was whether to drop the Raiders nickname, which critics said was offensive to Indigenous people and has racist connotations. The school board voted once to drop the nickname, then brought it back, then dropped it again after the Legislature banned offensive mascot nicknames.
“I’m excited to be here for the kids and to help our community move forward and to focus on more pertinent issues than a mascot and a name,” Hauke said.
She is particularly interested in why violence has increased in Rutland schools, and she wants to put a stop to it.
“Over the past couple of years, violence and bullying has been a concern,” Hauke said. “It’s important to support our teachers in giving them the best tools to work with to help all of these children succeed.”
Hauke said all four of her children will be involved in Rutland City schools next year. She said she has always been involved with her kids’ educations, but because the pandemic had restricted who could be in the classrooms, she decided to run for school board.
“I’ve always been volunteering in classrooms, whenever there’s a field day or a field trip or an open house,” she said. “I feel like this is the next step in being involved.”
Hauke lost when she ran last year but said she was not discouraged and was urged by others in the community to give it another shot.
Ryan Carney also has children attending Rutland’s public schools. Carney, a musician, said he is passionate about bolstering the district’s support of arts programs, and part of that reasoning comes from his kids.
“I have two kids who are 8 and 6, and both of them, I find, are very artistic themselves,” he said. “I would like to make sure that they can continue that when they are older.”
Carney said it is important that the school board includes “somebody who has younger children. I want to make sure that the experience that they have — and all other students who are their age — that they all have the best opportunities that we can provide for them.”
Carney said he is relieved that the mascot debate is completed because “there is so much more to be done.”
Kevin Kiefaber and Cathy Solsaa, the two incumbents, say they are excited to continue their work after gaining a term’s worth of experience.
Kiefaber was a guidance counselor for almost 20 years before he retired, but he still works part time in the guidance department at the Otter Valley schools. When he decided to run for local office, he said friends suggested either the city government’s Board of Aldermen or the Board of School Commissioners, and he chose the latter because of his experience in schools.
“Through my experience, I know how one decision or one way of treating a situation helps or hinders certain students,” he said. He’s running for a second term because he wants to make good use of his understanding of how things work and to assist new members who may have less experience.
“With one term’s experience, I’m one of the most experienced people on the board,” he said. “I thought it was important to have some folks stick around that had some experience, that knew how things work.”
Kiefaber said the mascot issue may have guided people’s decision-making in past years, but the issue is finally settled.
“We are Rutland,” he said.
Cathy Solsaa, an accounting specialist, also has one term under her belt and said she is excited to build on momentum that began during the pandemic.
“Coming out of Covid, we’ve had the benefit of federal funds, and those funds have allowed us to do some strategic planning,” she said. “It’s really exciting.”
Solsaa said her work as an accounting specialist informs her school board decision-making because the primary focus is budget and policy. Like Kiefaber, Solsaa said her experience plays a large role in her candidacy, as she was not only a board member, but was also the board’s clerk.
“I feel like my three years experience really brings good perspective in the continuing process,” she said. “That’s why I’m running.”
As for mascots, Solsaa echoed her fellow candidates and noted that new state legislation was what ended the debate.
“It’s not contentious,” she said. “Legislation passed, so it became not an issue for us.”