Cheryl Aylesworth attended her last Dunklin R-5 Board of Education meeting as a member on March 19.
Aylesworth, 74, a longtime educator, had served on the Dunklin school board since 2012. She did not seek reelection to the board in Tuesday’s election.
Tammy Heidland, who was elected to the board in 2015 and is the current president, said Aylesworth was her mentor.
“She’s always a big encourager. She is a huge supporter of education,” Heidland said. “She’s just a phenomenal person. I always say I want to be like Cheryl when I grow up because she has so much knowledge.”
Heidland said Aylesworth championed many new projects at the district, including a new addition at Pevely Elementary, security upgrades at both Pevely Elementary and Senn-Thomas Middle School and a new gym to be built at the high school.
Cheryl Aylesworth receives flowers at the meeting.
Jim Kasten, who served for 15 years on the Dunklin Board of Education until stepping down in 2022, said he enjoyed his time on the board with Aylesworth.
“Cheryl is phenomenal lady with bundles of energy,” he said. “She thinks outside the box and comes up with great ideas for ways to help kids, to promote the school and to promote education.”
Kasten said the district couldn’t have had a better board member for these past 12 years.
“She’s always positive. She always goes the extra mile for students,” he said. “I truly believe that she is a jewel for our community.”
Aylesworth said she is most proud of helping the school board members understand their purpose.
“I think whenever a board doesn’t understand what they’re really there for, it can get pretty sticky,” she said. “I helped our board understand that our job is to just oversee our superintendent. And then it’s his job to oversee everybody else.”
Aylesworth said she feels comfortable stepping down from the board because she believes it is in good hands.
“I’m very happy with the people who are on the board. They’re all really dedicated to our students, which should be our first concern,” she said. “I think they’re going in the right direction and I’m excited. I think everything is good right now. We’ve got great building projects going on, and we stayed within our budgets. I think our community is pretty happy.”
Aylesworth said she may be leaving the school board, but she will still be around to help the district, like working on the Blackcat Hall of Fame and volunteering in other ways.
“I thought now is my opportunity to go into the classrooms and help maybe do some tutoring or something like that,” she said.
Aylesworth, a 1967 De Soto High School graduate, has spent more than 40 years in education, starting her career in 1971 at the Grandview R-2 School District, where she was a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher.
After that, she was an alternative school teacher at the Sikeston R-6 School District and then a kindergarten and fifth-grade teacher at the Festus R-6 School District.
In 1980, Aylesworth went to work for the Dunklin School District, starting at Senn-Thomas Middle School as a sixth-grade teacher before becoming a school counselor and then a principal at Herculaneum High School in 2003. She served in that role for two years before leaving in 2005 for a job as the principal at Hillsboro High School, retiring in 2009.
Then, she went to work supervising student teachers at the University of Central Missouri and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and now she’s an instructor at Jefferson College.
Aylesworth and her husband, Jerry, have three children and five grandchildren. While one of her sons and his family live in the St. Louis area, her two other children and their families live abroad, with a son in Paris, France, and a daughter in British Columbia, Canada, so she plans to use her extra time to visit them.