Photo by Deb Gau Marshall School Board member Sara Runchey answered a question at Thursday’s school board candidate forum in Marshall. There are a total of seven candidates vying for three seats on the school board. From left to right, candidates include Ben Walker, Anne Marie Vorbach, Runchey, Trudy Madetzke, current school board member Jeff Chapman, Sara Brink, and Heather Anderson.

MARSHALL — Voters in the Marshall Public School district will need to elect a total of three new school board members on Nov. 8 — and there will be a full slate of candidates to choose from. During a candidate forum held Thursday at the Marshall-Lyon County Library, the seven candidates running for school board spoke about their priorities for MPS, as well as topics like addressing the achievement gap.

Candidates running for three open school board seats include current board members Jeff Chapman and Sara Runchey, and challengers Heather Anderson, Sara Brink, Trudy Madetzke, Anne Marie Vorbach and Ben Walker.

Board candidates said they wanted to help keep a strong school system in Marshall. In response to a question about their top priorities if elected, nearly all the candidates emphasized supporting teachers and students at MPS.

Brink said in addition to supporting students and teachers, she wanted to help make sure MPS follows through with some recent additions to educational programs.

“I think there’s been some great changes and great additions made recently, like the new career school that’s opening, the ag classes that are starting in the middle school, the PAES lab,” Brink said.

Madetzke said she wanted to be a voice for parents, and to improve communication between parents, the school board, and school staff.

“Communication is so important, I think, for trusting and just understanding where you’re at and what your goals are so they can be shared by staff and by parents,” Madetzke said.

Candidates were also asked how they thought Marshall should address the achievement gap in the school district.

Brink said open communication would be important to help MPS students recover from the academic gaps that widened during the COVID pandemic.

“It has to be opening up communication, just to make sure that we’re addressing the kids’ needs. Everyone is different. Everyone’s on a different level, whether it’s academically or socially or both,” Brink said.

“Minnesota’s known to have the worst achievement gap in the whole country,” Chapman said. He said it would be important to help catch up students who had fallen behind during the pandemic. “So, we are putting more money into that, more paras, more tools for our teachers, but it’s gonna take a while to get caught back up. But we cannot keep on doing the same thing the same way.”

“Early childhood, early family (education) is extremely important to our kids when they get into school, so our district needs to be a champion of early childhood,” Runchey said. She said MPS also needed to continue to support school administrators and teachers to help individual students learn.

Madetzke called for an emphasis on learning basic skills, without the use of calculators and computers.

“I would like to see and have teachers able to work on that better,” she said.

Vorbach said the school board’s role in narrowing the achievement gap would lie in things like setting a vision for the school district, or providing resources for teachers.

“I think what’s really important is to remember for school board members to do our jobs, so that other people can do their jobs, and to be sort of clear about what’s ours to do and what’s not our to do,” she said.

Walker said he agreed that school board members needed to help give schools the support and resources needed to help students learn.

“If we’re going to be supporting the schools, we need to be able to support the teachers. We need to be able to give them chances to be working more one-on-one with students,” he said. “It’s also important that we need to celebrate our successes.”

“I agree that the school board needs to support teachers,” Anderson said. “I also agree it’s very important to get that help in early education, and that we need to be advocates to parents to be enrolling their students in these early education programs.”

Several candidates voiced support for a proposed MPS operating referendum, which is also on the ballot this fall. The Marshall district is asking for voters’ support to reinstate an operating levy of $675 per pupil.

“I would say a way more important vote than voting for any of us, is voting for that operating levy,” Vorbach said.

Chapman said the operating levy would help MPS avoid having to face potential cuts.

“You guys show up and pass the referendum, so we don’t have to face questions like that. Vote yes,” he said.