January is School Board Appreciation Month and we would like to honor our school board members for their dedicated service to our community through their service as a school board member. This is a thankless job and has some large amounts of stress especially recently with the dealings of the pandemic. Their support and encouragement is very much appreciated by the staff and students they serve.
Our members are: Troy Isaacson (President), Bryan Rickard (Vice-President), Kelly Flavin (recently resigned), Troy Carlgren, Sharon Segerhammar, Brandi Bray, and Jared Gile. Their years of service range from less than a year to 12 years. If you see them out and about, please take the time to thank them for everything they are doing for the education of our young people.
Some highlights of the past year under their direction include: Passing the bond issue to upgrade our facilities, upgrading our curriculums, providing increases in salaries for all school personnel, maintaining and updating our transportation fleet, and providing for much needed professional development time and resources. They continue to strive for the best education possible for the students while being fiscally responsible.
Some of these items will continue to be focal points over the next couple of years. They will also oversee more upgrades to facilities through the use of capital outlay funds, continued efforts to help all students succeed via our Multi-Tier System of Support or MTSS process, and continual upgrades to our Career and Technical Education pathways. We are very excited about the direction our district is headed and it all starts from their leadership.
Steve Joonas
Superintendent of USD 426 Pike Valley