Julie Zupfer Anderson
Sartell
Gary Schnellert’s recent letter highlighted money spent by the school board. Schnellert himself was a board member. He and Chris Gross were voted onto the board during the June 26, 2012 meeting due to the resignations of Patrick Jacobson-Schulte and myself. This was a time of board upheaval regarding the renewal of Joe Hill’s superintendent contract.
By the end of the Oct. 15 meeting, Schnellert, Gross, Asfeld and Riordan had voted to remove Mary McCabe as chair, voted in Riordan to replace her and had moved the discussion of Joe Hill’s contract renewal from discussion to approval. Imagine participating in all of this, not even three months into their board term.
During a decade on the board, I well understood open-meeting law and negotiations. All of those actions involved open-meeting law violations and re-negotiating Joe Hill’s contract illegally behind closed doors. A former board member told me the district ultimately paid $200,000 to buy out Hill’s contract.
Who else is potentially costing taxpayers big bucks? Emily Larson, Jen Smith and Scott Wenshau and their failed gamesmanship regarding the district’s 21 non-union contracts. If the city chooses to hire its own Information Technology personnel, on an annual basis the school district will lose over $60,000 revenue from the cancelled city IT contract AND the taxpayers could pay close to double that amount.
Schnellert is endorsing the election of more “Kids Over Politics”-aligned candidates. I urge you to vote for Tricia Meling, Matt Moehrle and Chelsea Thielen.