A familiar face has returned to the Fox C-6 School District’s Board of Education.
On Tuesday night (June 15), Vicki Hanson was appointed to the board, filling a seat left vacant when Bob Gruenewald resigned from the board on May 19, less than a year into his three-year term. Board members voted 4-2 to appoint Hanson to the seat, which will be up for election in April 2022.
Hanson previously served one term on the board but lost re-election in April. She also previously worked for the district.
Board member Jim Chellew made the motion to appoint Hanson to the open seat, and Carole Yount seconded the motion. Chellew, Yount, Judy Smith and Krystal Hargis voted in favor of appointing Hanson to the board, and Michelle Chamberlain and April Moeckel voted against Hanson the appointment.
Before Hanson was appointed, Chamberlain made a motion to appoint Colton A. Kruep to the seat and Moeckel seconded the motion. However, the motion failed to get a majority vote, with
Chamberlain, Moeckel and Smith voting in favor of appointing Kruep, and Chellew, Hargis and Yount voting against his appointment.
Hanson served as the board president for most of the 2020-2021 school year after being elected to the board in 2018. She retired from Fox in 2008 after serving as an assistant superintendent in charge of special education.
Moeckel garnered the most votes among the eight candidates for two open seats in the April election, receiving 1,775 votes, and Chellew won the other seat with 1,721 votes. Hanson received 1,536 votes – the third highest number, and none of the other five candidates for the two seats got more than 738 votes.
Kruep ran unsuccessfully for a school board seat in 2020. He works in the internal audit department at U.S. Bank, according to a Leader candidate survey he filled out in 2020.
In a May 19 resignation letter to the board, Gruenewald said because of the school board’s nepotism policy, he needed to give up his seat in order for his “family members to have the opportunity to seek future advancement within their career, for which they have worked diligently.”
Gruenewald’s daughter, Heather Schwalbe, who was a guidance counselor at Fox High School, has since been promoted to assistant principal at the school. The board voted 4-0 in a June 1 closed meeting to promote her, with Krystal Hargis and Chamberlain abstaining from the vote.
For more on Hanson’s appointment to the board, read the June 24 edition of the Leader.