Mike Grogan Residents will be heading to the polls to choose from two candidates to fill one seat on the St. Ignace Area Schools Board of Education May 6. Incumbent Mike Grogan of Moran is seeking reelection to the four-year position and is being challenged by Sue St. Onge of St. Ignace.

Mike Grogan

Mr. Grogan, 50, has lived in St. Ignace all of his life. The LaSalle High School graduate and his wife, Joni, have a son in the ninth grade at the high school.

The disabled ironworker has served on the school board for four years, first as a trustee, and for the last two years as board treasurer.

Mr. Grogan is on the Finance Committee, Policy Committee, and is a member of the High School Improvement Team. During his time on the board, he also has been on the Elementary and Middle School Improvement Team, the District-Wide Improvement Team, and the Negotiation Team for support staff. He has attended four workshops on how to be an effective board member.

"I am running because I like working with and for kids. I am an advocate for healthy schools and have been involved with Mackinac County Wellness Coalition, which promotes healthy lifestyles for kids. I also run the 4-H archery program at the middle school," he said.

Sue St. Onge The program is for students age six to 19.

A priority for him, Mr. Grogan said, is to be a part of a team that offers the best education possible to all students, whether they have a 4.0 grade point average or a 1.6 grade point.

The board, he said, has faced tough decisions, and solutions are not always popular with everyone.

"A board member has to think what is the best choice for the students and district, and move forward," he said.

Mr. Grogan would like to use the knowledge he has gained over the last four years to continue working as part of the board to improve the school and help students transition into successful adults.

"I've learned a lot in the last four years about how the school runs," he said. "I would like to do another term and use what I've learned to help the students be ready to move into the next phases of their lives with the tools they need to be successful."

Financing and curriculum alignment are top issues for the school. A tight operating budget requires creative thinking in limiting expenses while providing a high caliber of education, he pointed out.

"Financing is huge and very hard to plan for with the economy of the state and the number of kids leaving our area," Mr. Grogan said.

Fixed costs to operate the school and ancillary costs continue to rise, while at the same time, as families leave the area to find work, student enrollment is dropping. Having fewer students reduces state funding.

"We try to be as conservative as possible," he said of expenses, "and still have a quality program going."

Curriculum alignment, said Mr. Grogan, is strategic for students to make sure they meet state graduation requirements. An effective curriculum also helps students perform better on state tests, such as the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP). Curriculum work on the board level begins with those serving as representatives on the Improvement Team.

"As the requirements for students to graduate are getting tougher," he said, "the students are having to learn more at an early age. Our school is making very good progress in raising the scores on the MEAP test."

The board, he said, reviews test scores and discusses with administrators positive results and areas that require improvements. The improvement team provides input on adjusting the curriculum to prepare junior-year students for the Michigan Merit Examination (MME). The team also works on the curriculum to ensure students meet the new state graduation requirements.

Teamwork and being up-to-date on all issues are important for board operations, he said, and allows each member to make educated decisions for the district.

Sue St. Onge

Ms. St. Onge, 39, of St. Ignace is a La Salle High School graduate, with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She returned to the area four years ago. She is a youth services coordinator in the Education Department of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and works from a classroom at St. Ignace Middle School. The focus of her job is to work with students ages three through 18 in academic mentoring and cultural preservation programming.

She has had 13 years of financial management and business experience, having started a restaurant with a friend in Ann Arbor and later managing a fine dining restaurant in Kalamazoo. While in Kalamazoo, she was president of the Parent Teacher Organization for two years and the general manager of a more than 300-member cooperative health food store, where she was responsible for payroll, banking, state and federal tax preparation, ordering, marketing, and staffing. For the last 11 years, she has been a mediator, and previously served as a Michigan State Supreme Court appointed mediator.

She has two children, Gavin, 11, a sixth grade student at the middle school, and Helena, 4, who attends Sault Tribe Head Start.

She wants to serve on the board to represent tribal members, she said, and to offer her financial management experience.

"I am running for school board because I believe that I offer a perspective not often heard on our current board," she said. "In a school where nearly 60% of the student body is tribal, there should be someone representing their interests on the school board.

"I also believe I possess the skills to help our school weather the tough times ahead. I think an effective school board should consist of members who have good facilitation skills, understand financial statements, and be able to be fair and objective decision makers. They should also understand that they are not meant to be a rubber stamp for the status quo, but rather should seek out input from all the parties that make up a school community: students, parents, teachers, and administrators."

The school budget, she said, is definitely a concern as it is affected by dwindling enrollment.

"The inequity of state and federal funding in rural areas compared to that of urban areas," she said, "leaves our schools in a tight financial situation."

The No Child Left Behind Act has had a negative impact on formal education, she said, and standardized testing is biased against minority students. State funding based on test scores leaves the neediest schools the least funded.

"I want my children's school to teach them how to think," she said, "not what to think. I want youth to be actively engaged in their education, not passive beings staring at the clock. When all we look at as a measure of how our schools are doing is test scores, we take the creativity and the wonder of learning out of our children's education."

The school board needs to become more proactive by creating an atmosphere that encourages students to remain in school. It also needs to respect and value both parents and students, she suggested.