Next year, the Brown County Board of School Trustees will have a new member — who up until last school year, was a teacher — helping to make decisions for the school district.
The top vote-getter in the race was Amy Huffman Oliver from District 3, who received 2,782 votes.
Two at-large seats were on the ballot, being sought by five candidates from three different districts.
District 2 candidate and incumbent Stephanie Porter Kritzer was re-elected to serve a third term after receiving 2,725 votes.
District 1 incumbent Marlene Barnett received 1,256 votes and will not serve another term. She said she was disappointed she was not re-elected, but that she enjoyed her four years on the board where she learned a lot.
Barnett said she was most proud of the continuous budget cuts — totaling millions of dollars since 2017 — that the district has made over the last few years without firing any teachers.
“I only had the four years, unlike the rest of them who had been there for eight, 10 or 12 years,” Barnett said.
“It was a short journey for me, but I enjoyed every minute of it.”
Kritzer said she was “very flattered” that voters selected her to serve another term.
“I am grateful to all of the people who worked the polls and the early voting. I really appreciate it. I know it’s hard work and I really appreciate that. I thank the voters for their confidence in me,” she said.
She said the community should know she is always open and available to them if they have any concerns.
“I don’t like to discuss things on Facebook. I don’t think that’s the forum, but they can certainly email me and just share their concerns with me. I always felt like I am pretty approachable,” she said.
Kritzer spent 36 years as a parent in Brown County and began her career in education working in a daycare. There, she learned the importance of play in early childhood development and in the classroom as children grow, she wrote in her candidate questionnaire. She worked as a school paraprofessional for 17 years.
After serving on the school board for two consecutive terms, Kritzer said she wanted to run again to see through projects that have been started during her time with the board, “bring my knowledge onto the next term,” she said.
One of those projects is reversing low enrollment in the district, which affects financial support the district receives from the state to pay teachers and staff. District leaders also want to ensure students get a world class experience in the classroom despite budget cuts.
In the next four years, Kritzer said the board will be focused on keeping a balanced budget as state funding decreases. She added that the district will also be looking at busing to see if there are ways to do it better and less expensively.
“There’s hope we can make that a better situation for all of the kids. Then, of course, we’re just always trying to improve our staff and keep our staff. They are just wonderful,” she said.
Oliver said the district’s financial issues are one of her top goals for her term. Oliver, who’s also an attorney, said she plans to lobby the state legislature to change the student tuition support formula.
“That is absolutely essential to our finances in the future is the funding formula. It’s just so brutal to us that I feel like, as a board member, I would have more of a voice to try to go to the legislature and really be an advocate for our school system and other small, rural school systems,” she said.
Oliver was a teacher for six years, most recently teaching social studies at Brown County Junior High School. She did not leave her teaching job because of the school district, she said. “It’s just public school teaching; it’s not Brown County Schools. … I love our school system.”
“I left because public school teaching is brutal, and I could not handle it physically or mentally anymore,” she explained. “I was working 65 hours a week, and, you know, thinking about it 24 hours a day. I could not get my life in balance by doing that.”
Because of her experience, she said her time on the board will be spent thinking as a teacher and representing teachers.
“I was probably elected by a lot of teachers who want me to be their voice on the board, so I take that responsibility very seriously. I had to leave teaching because the pressure and money just don’t make any sense,” she said.
She and her husband, Jim, have one son who recently graduated from Brown County High School; the other is a senior this year.
Oliver said that Superintendent Laura Hammack is “amazing” and that she will work to help her more outside of meetings. “She does all of the work. I feel like it’s the job of the board to be more engaged and more supportive in doing things outside of meetings that are going to support our schools. I feel like that is something I want to bring,” she said.
Oliver said she fell asleep on election night before the winners were finalized, as absentee ballots were counted late into the night.
“My husband woke me up at about 11:20 and told me that I won,” she said.
Another goal for Oliver is to move the school community forward so that it is more equitable and inclusive to all, as she had heard concerns from voters.
“But I am only one member of the board. Dr. Hammack is already doing a lot of good things, so I hope to move that cause forward,” she said.
“I also don’t want expectations to be so high that I’m suddenly going to radically fix everything that is wrong with a school system. … I am doing this because I feel like I have something to offer and I feel like I can be a really good board member, but we have really big issues in front of us.”
“I wish I could say, ‘Yay!’ but it’s a little bit more like, ‘OK, I’m in this, and I’ve got to do a good job at it,’” she said.
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Brown County school board at large (two elected, but not from the same district)
District 1
Marlene Barnett;1256
District 2
Stephanie Porter Kritzer;2725
District 3
Amy Huffman Oliver;2782
Linda Hobbs;1645
Lance L. Miller;1777
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