Meet the School Board Candidates

Name: Leah M. Lipska

 Bio: I have lived in Mount Horeb for 22 years. My husband, Mickey, grew up here and we always knew we wanted to raise kids in our wonderful school district. I am the mother of four wonderful children: Phoenix (17), Orion (15), Cleopatra (10), and Maximus (6). My day job is as an Application Consultant for goVirtualOffice. I also volunteer as the President of the Mount Horeb K-5 PTO, Troop Leader for Girl Scout Troop 7089, and volunteer for many other organizations in Mount Horeb.

 Why are you running for a seat on the Mount Horeb Area Board of Education? 

Lipska: I have had three wonderful terms on the board so far, for a total of nine years.  My youngest son has just started his school journey in our district, and I want to continue to make Mount Horeb Schools a great place to learn. I want to make sure he, as well every other student in the district, can meet their full potential.  I learned very early on in my career that to come onto this board with an agenda limits your ability to make progress and you limit your potential to make a change.  You need to keep an open mind and always be ready to pivot based on the landscape of the times.

Which qualities, skills and/or experiences make you the right candidate for the job? 

Lipska: I have nine years of school board experience under my belt.  Prior to becoming an application consultant with goVirtualOffice, I was a Program and Policy Analyst with the WI Department of Corrections.  With the boards two main objectives being to supervise the Superintendent and to write policy, my years of experience in writing policy and procedures for the WI Department of Corrections gives me a unique ability to lockdown policies and make them less open to interpretation.  I also have many years as a union steward and union president, which gives me a great understanding of Robert’s Rules of Order and is useful in maintaining teacher relationships.

The past two years have been difficult for everyone, including children and teens in the Mount Horeb Area School District. What has the school district done right during the pandemic, and what should it do differently moving forward?

Lipska: I personally believe we did the best thing by going virtual and still offering a virtual option to students in the 2020-21 school year.  Even now the data is always changing and we made the best decisions we had with the data at the time. I believe that going forward we need to continue to listen to what the experts say and trust that we are always doing what we believe is best for students, staff, and the community as a whole.  Moving forward we need to be more agile in our ability to make changes when the need arises.  The board has already done that this year by meeting on a Sunday afternoon to review a COVID quarantine process that was not working the way we had intended.

The physical toll of the COVID pandemic is clear and fairly easy to quantify. The long-term developmental, psychological and emotional damage caused by the pandemic (and the steps taken to try to fight it) are much harder to gauge. But it’s clear that people – particularly children – are increasingly isolated and fearful, and that learning outcomes have suffered, in Mount Horeb and across the country. How can the school board balance the risk of physical harm from COVID with the amorphous problems the fight against the pandemic can cause?

Lipska: My children, for example, thrived in the online setting and due to many conversations were not isolated or fearful. However, I know that was not true for all children.  That is the thing with children, they all learn differently, and they all need different things.  That is an issue with how the current school system is set up.  Historically, we did not allow for students to have individual learning plans.  We did not meet kids where there were. We teach them the same things the same way.  Slowly over the last few years, and somewhat thanks to pivoting to virtual learning, we have been able to change curriculum and/or the way we are teaching.  Some of the Google Classroom lessons have stayed in our non-virtual world because the students really responded to the lessons.  The district continues to monitor the data for learning loss and continues to determine how to help those students that need it.

The local school district includes about 2,500 students and serves eight communities. It receives $30 million in funding annually, and receives 40 percent of the local tax bill. Talk about the current state of school funding, and your vision for its future? 

Lipska: The current biennium budget does not allow for any increase in funding for the next two years, which is troubling considering that all costs are increasing. 80-ish percent of our budget goes to staff salaries and benefits.  We need to determine a way to increase staff pay to compete with other local school districts.  We do not want to lose staff simply because another district can pay them more. The Community and Legislative committee are working on a document to help the community understand how school financing works. We throw out a lot of terms and it is important for people to understand how the process really works. Our district has always done well with what we are given.  We tend to find unique ways to help offset costs, like grants and donations, and I hope that work continues.  

What, as you understand them, are the responsibilities of a local school board member? What is the scope of your responsibilities if elected? Local issues? County issues? State issues? National ones?

Lipska: A school board member’s responsibilities include supervising the superintendent and creating policy. At its most basic level that is what we do. As a school board member, you are only a school board member when the seven board members (or a quorum of members) are at a publicly noticed meeting. You make decisions as a group and no one member has more power over another.  We can take a stand on local, county, state, and even national issues as we have done by writing resolutions on things like the ATC line.  However, we are a non-partisan group and need to limit our scope to things that affect our schools and community.

Who are school board members elected to represent? With the complexities and problems of the pandemic thrust upon everyone in a way that was maddening for pretty much everyone, the community debated whose interests the school board should be looking out for, particularly because those interests do not always run in tandem. Students? Teachers? Parents? Taxpayers? 

Lipska: Ultimately, we are beholden to the people that elected us.  It is their tax money that helps fund the schools. One thing we need to keep in mind is that only a small percentage of those taxpayers that elect us have students in our district.  We also have a large population of staff that does not live in our district.  We need to make sure that all decisions we make are in the best interest of our schools, and that includes students, staff, parents, and taxpayers.  It is a fine line to walk, and I learned very early on that not everyone is going to agree with your decisions.  However, you must do the best you can with the information you have and move forward.

What can the school board do to promote and protect local government transparency?

Lipska: One thing that our district has been doing is creating to promote transparency in our finances is to put together videos and information sheets about school financing. This helps educate the public and therefore gives them a better idea of how the money is received, allocated, and disseminated. The other thing that our board can do is hold more listening sessions.  The hard part about a listening session is that it is just  us listening to the community.  It is not often able to be an open dialogue due to open meeting laws.

How do you define Critical Race Theory and what do you feel its role, if any, should be in the classroom?

Lipska: Critical Race Theory is a curriculum that is often taught at the college level. Critical Race Theory is not new, it has been around for over forty years. It teaches that bias and prejudice are embedded in our justice system, laws, and policies.  It should be taught at the college level but is not something that is appropriate for a K-12 curriculum.

If elected, what are your top priorities? 

Lipska: Prior to the pandemic, the board was in talks about what to do with the Early Learning Center.  That building did not get much attention during the referendum and the plan was to come back to it after the other referendum was complete.  That is my top priority, to determine what to do with that building, whether it is to tear it down, renovate, or some combination that building has not had the love that it deserves.  It is the first school building our families see when they start with our district, and we need to it reflect well on us.  We will also continue to monitor learning loss from the pandemic as that will be ongoing for a few years.

What are the school district’s biggest challenges in 2022 and beyond? 

Lipska: The biggest challenges for 2022 and beyond will be financial, in my opinion.  With no new funds in the next two-year budget, we will need to get creative in our ability to retain and attract staff as well as keep our buildings up to par.

What are its greatest opportunities? 

Lipska: Our greatest opportunities are to learn what worked really well in virtual learning and bring that into the classroom.  Looking at processes and teaching methods to determine how to teach these students who are going to be using technology more and more in the real world. We have the technology now that we did not have before, and we need to utilize it to teach our students how to be successful when they graduate.

What role can/should local schools play in addressing mental health issues in the community? 

Lipska: Mental health issues are a community issue.  They affect everyone in some way and if the schools can use our resources to help address the issue, then I wholeheartedly believe that we should.

Three years ago, the Mount Horeb Area School District completed work on $38.5 million in building expansions and upgrades approved and paid for through a voter referendum. It was the largest successful referendum in district history, and future referenda are currently in the works. What role should these ballot measures play in funding the district going forward? 

Lipska: In a perfect world, we would not need referendums to be able to fund our district, however, it is not a perfect world.  I believe we are going to need to rely on more referendums to be able to keep our schools functioning at the level we have come accustomed to, especially with no new money coming in from state funding. Our district showed that we could take the money we were given by the taxpayers and turn it into something amazing.  The updates we were able to make with the $38.5 million went above my wildest dreams.

What is the district currently doing well? 

Lipska: I think we have done a great job at pivoting when needed based on the current pandemic.  I believe we have done a great job at coming up with a strategic plan so that we are not always being reactive, but instead can be proactive.

In what areas could it improve?

Lipska: I believe we can do a better job at getting the community more involved in our meetings.  I believe live streaming the meeting will get us a larger audience and therefore more people will be in the know.  Figuring out the logistics of that will take time, but I believe it is beneficial to all.  

In a very crowded field of candidates, what message would you like to make sure voters hear about you and the job you would do on the board if elected?

Lipska: I always tell my kids to be the change they want to see in the world and that is why I ran for school board nine years ago.  Our district was one of two districts that did not have 4K, we did not have summer enrichment programs, and in the wake of Act 10 choices were being made that were setting us up for failure. I ran to enact change.  Since being elected nine years ago I have done just that, we now have 4K, summer enrichment, and are working on setting ourselves us to retain and attract great staff.  Things have not been easy in my time on the board.  I have faced many, many, many issues in our district that were met with confrontation from all angles.  I never backed down and I never gave up.  That is my promise.  No matter how hard things get, I will keep fighting for our district.  I will do what I believe is right, even when it goes against the grain.  Here is to another great three years!