Jefferson County Executive Ken Waller is nominating Robert Kruse, Lisa Treat and Derrick Good to fill three slots on the Hillsboro R-3 Board of Education that were vacated when board members resigned last month.
The Jefferson County Council is scheduled to decide whether to approve the nominees at a special meeting scheduled for 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the Jefferson County Administration Center.
Twenty-three people applied to replace school board president John Stewart and members Charles “Bo” Harrison and Dan McCarthy, after they resigned. Then, Waller narrowed those down to his three nominees.
Good, an attorney and district parent, has been a vocal opponent of the way R-3 administrators and board members have handled the presence of a transgender student at Hillsboro High School and the controversy that emerged when the public learned that the student requested and was allowed to use the girls’ restrooms and locker room.
Good said he knows Treat and Kruse are also district parents, but no other information was immediately available about the two.
Stewart announced his resignation Sept. 3 and Harrison and McCarthy both announced their resignations Sept. 8. In their letters of resignation, Stewart and Harrison stated no reasons for leaving the board. In his, McCarthy said he was resigning over “philosophical differences.”
On Sept. 10, the four remaining board members – John Lewis, Lisa Welker, Beth Petry and Erick Stephenson – voted to accept the resignations.
According to Statute 162.261.1, a board appointee holds office “until the next municipal election, when a director shall be elected for the unexpired term.”
The next school board election will be April 5, 2016, and filings open Dec. 15.
Stewart was serving his first three-year term on the board and would have been up for election in April 2016.
McCarthy’s current three-year term expires in April 2017. He had served on the board since 2011. Harrison has served nine years in various stints on the board, and his current term expires in April 2016.
The names of Waller’s three nominees are listed on the agenda for the Oct. 20 special meeting that was posted this afternoon (Oct. 16) on the county website.