Winning the four uncontested races for the Monroe County Community School Corporation Board of Trustees was straightforward. Now, board members face the challenge of completing the final year of their five-year strategic plan.
April Hennessey was reelected as the District 2 board member with 24,991 votes. Erin Cooperman was reelected as the District 5 board member with 23,699 votes. Ross Grimes was reelected for the District 6 seat with 23,340 votes. With 23,474 votes, Tiana Williams Iruoje won the District 4 seat, which incumbent Cathy Fuentes-Rowher chose to vacate at the end of her current term. These elected members will join three others on the board.
This school year, the board will make a decision on a school merger, hire a permanent superintendent and adopt a new strategic plan. The new term for Districts 2, 4, 5 and 6 school board seats begins Jan. 1.
The elected school board members said they were relieved because there was no competition in the individual district races. But they also said they were concerned with the lack of community involvement in the school board election. Hennessey said it is up to the board to engage people in the county — to make them want to run and feel commitment to the district beyond a single issue.
“I think in the past, we’ve typically had someone opposed in their seat,” Hennessey said. “And that does worry me because, yes, it’s a lot of work, it’s heavy work, but it’s also really important work.”
The uncontested race
In the past five MCCSC school board elections, only two candidates ran unopposed. Keith Klein won the uncontested District 5 seat in 2016 and 2020. Brandon Shurr won the uncontested District 7 seat in 2018 and 2022. All the seats up for reelection were uncontested this year.
Board members said people may have been deterred from running for school board seats because of two aspects of the job: the time commitment and seemingly constant conflict.
According to Cooperman and Grimes, a board member’s role may require up to 20 hours of weekly work. Outside of monthly board meetings, they must educate themselves in preparation for a vote and maintain communication with constituents. Members also represent the board at community events.
Being an officer on the board requires extra time, as well. The board’s president, vice president and secretary are appointed or elected by the board. They meet with the superintendent each month, outside of regular meetings, and have added responsibilities.
MCCSC board members receive $2,000 as compensation for their services each year, as well as a per diem of $112 for each regular meeting attended and a per diem of $62 for each additional meeting attended. Hennessey said salaries may be why others aren’t running. Cooperman said she still expected people to run against them, regardless of the pay and time commitment.
“Part of the reason that was surprising, though, is because we had done some sort of controversial things in the past three years,” Cooperman said. “So we expected that people who were unhappy with our approach might run against us. That didn’t bear out.”
High school schedule change proposal
Grimes said the first post-COVID-19 pandemic hurdle was the Bloomington High School North and Bloomington High School South schedule alignment proposal in October 2023.
The series of events surrounding the schedule change began Sept. 22, 2023, when BHSS’ student-led paper, The Optimist, published an article confirming that the district was considering changes to the schools’ schedules.. In the article, then-Superintendent Jeff Hauswald said schedules may change, and South would abandon its trimester schedule for a semester schedule in the potential plan.
Then, BHSN’s principal, Matthew Stark, sent a letter to families Sept. 25, 2023, saying the district had begun an investigative process that would result in a schedule change for the 2024-25 school year.
The district wanted to align high school schedules to address concerns over equity within the school district. In a student experience survey taken by 61.5% of students, 38% of Bloomington North students said classes were too long, with a higher percentage of students on free or reduced lunch responding that classes were overly long.
The next day at MCCSC’s school board meeting, the public commented on the proposal for 45 minutes. Of the 17 people who spoke, nine of them questioned the legitimacy of the schedule change’s evidence. Six people said the change would limit elective course options at BHSN, as students at North can take elective courses concurrently. One of the speakers formed an online petition, with 900 signatures at the time, that labeled six concerns addressed to the members of the MCCSC school board.
Those who signed the petition argued the school board lacked transparency in the process and rushed the change, among other claims.
The next week, the district sent focus group sign-up forms to families, students and community members. Then Hauswald announced in an email Oct. 20, 2023, the district would adopt a schedule change to align day-to-day protocol at both high schools, though there was no official schedule at the time. This was a common misconception, according to Grimes.
“There was never an official proposal that everybody could have something tangible to get mad at,” Grimes said.
Three days later, around 250 protesters gathered at the Monroe County Courthouse Square for what they called the “#OptionsAreEquity community rally” in response to the high school schedule change proposal. Protesters held signs, which included statements like, “collaborate don’t dictate” and “Hauswald you need to listen.”
At a school board meeting four days later, 45 members of the public commented on the schedule change, then a motion was carried to make high school scheduling a board voting matter. The motion, which Hennessey proposed, shifted responsibility from school administration to the district board members. It delayed the schedule change and recommended advisory committees, teacher union consultation and transparent data collection and presentation.
On July 24, the High School Scheduling Citizen Advisory Committee, made up of seven MCCSC staff workers, six parents and one student, released its final report. It found equity issues in the high schools because of differences in scheduling, including a difference in course weight and the number of possible elective credits students could take in four years.
The report said the majority of the committee does not propose changing the high school schedules, and while there are equity issues that need to be addressed, there is no current compelling evidence to support a schedule change.
After this report, the board has not discussed the high school schedule alignment proposal and Grimes said the issue lost its momentum.
“The students at South love their schedules and the students at North love their schedules,” Grimes said. “In the foreseeable future, I don’t see it coming up in this term. It just doesn’t seem to be a priority and that could be a difference in the superintendent.”
Superintendent search
Hauswald’s $228,926 contract buyout was finalized at a 48-second special meeting March 6, 2024. The board voted to replace him April 23 with Markay Winston, who had worked with MCCSC since 2017 as assistant superintendent and deputy superintendent. Winston’s year-long interim superintendent contract ends June 30, 2025. Before then, the board must vote to decide whether it will ask Winston to stay as permanent superintendent or begin an open search for a new superintendent. If it chooses to search, Winston may be included as a candidate.
Grimes said he couldn’t comment publicly on Winston’s future because the matter is currently a personnel issue, but he believes Winston communicated very well between the district and the community.
As a parent, Iruoje said she believed Winston had remarkable interactions with teachers, students and members of the community, and she should have been hired in 2021.
The next term
Next term, the board may sign a resolution to commit to the Childs-Templeton merger. If it plans on implementing the merger by the 2025-26 school year, it must finalize a timeline before the 2025 spring semester.
The original merger plan called for students from both schools to attend Childs Elementary for pre-K through second grade and Templeton Elementary for third through sixth grade. The board chose Childs and Templeton because the schools’ available resources vary widely despite being near each other, according to the merger resolution. The district determines the socioeconomic status of a school’s population by the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch; 72.21% of Templeton students qualify, while only 8.92% of Childs students do, according to state data.
The merger discussion led to an attendance zone redistricting study, which Hennessey said may bring a different way to solve the socioeconomic imbalance between the schools. Winston will give a redistricting study update at their next board meeting Nov. 19.
The MCCSC Board of School Trustees also approves a strategic plan every five years. The 2021-2025 strategic plan consisted of four priorities: equity, diversity, funding and communication. The board said it will begin a new plan after the 2024 election.
All candidates said discussions on the 2026-2030 strategic plan have not begun.
Hennessey said in drafting a new strategic plan, she’ll investigate disciplinary disparities, attendance rates, accessibility and partnership between Bloomington, Monroe County and MCCSC. The board’s next meeting is Nov. 19, and the new term begins Jan. 1, 2025.
Editor’s note:Cathy Fuentes-Rowher is related to a writer currently on staff at the IDS. That writer was not involved in the reporting, writing or editing of this story.
