Bemidji Area Schools Establishes New School Board

Monday evening marked Bemidji Area Schools’ first official school board meeting of 2023, which saw five new individuals join the board following November’s election. The night began with new members with four-year terms taking their oath of office, and later the board was organized to select individual roles including board chair, vice chair, clerk, and treasurer.

The night also saw board members organize additional considerations, namely committee assignments for the board itself. These committees include topics like finance and curriculum and are meant to give board members an aspect of the school district to oversee.

“We’re very fortunate that we have a very diverse board with a lot of good background,” said Bemidji Area Schools Superintendent Jeremy Olson. “And so we tried to match some of the committee assignments to some of the background that these board members bring, some of the expertise that they bring, because we want to keep our people in areas of passion.”

There was some tension when it came to selecting a school board chair as well as a vice chair, due to a long standing school board policy. The policy states that a board member must have two years of experience on the board to be eligible for the position of chair. This policy, if unchanged, would mean that only one school board member, Ann Long Voelkner, would be eligible for the position.

“There was some discussion whether we should change that,” explained Olson. “Ultimately what we ended up doing was maintaining this, electing a vice chair, and then talking about, ‘Where do we go from here?'”

It was later decided that Long Voelkner would serve as acting chair, with Dave Wall serving as vice chair. Not long after, Jenny Frenzel was named clerk and Julie Laitala was named treasurer of the board.

Also new to the board are Anna Manecke and Justin Hoover. The newly established board will meet for their first regular school board meeting on Monday, January 23rd.