In October 2022, Columbia Heights School Board Member Naty Severson stepped down from the board. A special election to formally fill her seat will be held during the 2024 general election. The term for the seat starts November 14, 2023 and ends January 6, 2025.
Three candidates are running for the open seat: Cheryl Ekstrand, Gregg Westerberg and incumbent Michelle Pettway, who was appointed by the board to replace Severson when she stepped down. A forum was held in the CHPS Family Center Community Room on the evening of October 3 to allow the three candidates to introduce themselves, and field community questions. The Columbia Heights Federation of Teachers, Local 710 hosted the forum, with Vice President Daniel Honigs moderating.
Cheryl Ekstrand has lived in Columbia Heights for 16 years, is a semi-retired small business owner (Totally Devoted Cleaning), and is an active volunteer for the children’s ministry at her church, Emmanuel Christian Center in Spring Lake Park. She wants to see Columbia Heights’ public schools become a hallmark of the public school system, and is concerned about childrens’ futures.
Michelle Pettway has a daughter in CHPS, attending North Park School for Innovation. She helped with the rebranding of North Park when it went through intensive renovations and rebranding following a referendum in 2018. She is part of the BIPOC Parental Advisory Committee. She said the Heights community is grand and diverse, and she wants to keep the momentum going.
Gregg Westerberg has lived in Columbia Heights for 32 years, and has grandchildren in the Heights school system. He is now retired, and wants to use his time and energy to become more involved supporting his granddaughters and their peers’ schooling.
Editor’s Note: The following responses have been paraphrased for space considerations. A full video recording of the candidates’ responses can be found online at youtube.com/watch?v=azCIZPx_mWg
Q: How would you address equity in
our school system?
Ekstrand: Students and faculty should all feel valued in the system. The roadmap implemented by the board was a solid path towards ensuring that.
Pettway: Words and their definitions are important. The board should define what equity means to CHPS outside of just the context of race. Disability, gender, and orientation should also be considered, and staff should be just as diverse as its student body. Securing funding is the most important step to making that happen.
Westerberg: The way CHPS supports equity is always in flux, due to the changing nature of how we, as a society, understand equity. The board should invest in accommodating a changing, diverse community, which they are already doing adequately.
Q: How would you advocate for the
district at a legislative level?
Ekstrand already makes regular visits to the capital to listen in on legislative sessions to stay informed on what is happening in our state government. She would continue those visits and would want direct lines of communication to the community’s representatives.
Pettway: Staying directly informed on legislative sessions is important, and it is just as important for representatives to stay up to date on what is happening in the community. She would want to keep representatives informed on the district’s needs.
Westerberg has not worked on a legislative level before, and would defer to more experienced members of the board until he felt he had gained more experience on such matters.
Q: How does the role of a board member differ from the role of a parent?
Ekstrand: It is the responsibility for the board to be advocates for parents and be the bridge between them and school faculty members.
Pettway has personally bridged the gap between parent and board member herself, as the mother of a student in the system, and a recently-appointed board member. She said it’s important for a board member to exemplify reliable action on matters the community asks for.
Westerberg: Parents tend to be more single-issue oriented. They care the most about actions that directly affect their household. A board member needs to have a better idea of the bigger picture, and must be prepared to sometimes be seen unfavorably when they take action for the greater community, as it’s impossible to make everyone happy at once.
Q: What challenges face the district post-pandemic?
Ekstrand: It’s important for the district to learn from its mistakes. Maintaining in-person learning will be a challenge going into winter, so it’s important that the district use the experience gained over the past three years to make sure no one is left behind.
Pettway: Now that the government has declared the pandemic to be over, emergency COVID funding is gone. The extra money the school has been using cannot be relied on anymore, which will come with its fair share of struggles. Mental health, alongside physical health, will remain important to focus on as well.
Westerberg: The pandemic took all the same old challenges and amplified them. The board should continue to push for extra resources to help deal with funding, staffing, and bus shortages, in particular.
Q: The board recently unanimously approved two referendums. How do you align with them?
Ekstrand supports more resources for schools, but also doesn’t want to overexert taxpayers. The district should look into new ways to generate funding to relieve the pressure on the community.
Pettway supports the referendums. Students haven’t seen an increase in the funding given to support them in a long time, and the funding increase from the past two referendums wasn’t proportionally very much per student. She added that, as a parent, she is willing to make sacrifices for her daughter’s education.
Westerberg: Teachers are one of the community’s most important resources, and he has never minded paying more to support them and investing in childrens’ futures. He understands the stress that comes with higher levies; however, he personally believed that they weren’t enough.
Q: How will you represent all families, even the ones you don’t agree with?
Ekstrand: It’s important to treat people with respect, even when they have a different idea on what’s best for the community. In order to move the community forward, we must find common ground with each other.
Pettway: It’s important for an elected official to at least listen, take everyone’s input into account, and give everyone an equal voice in the conversation. Everyone’s opinion matters, but not every action can be taken all at once.
Westerberg: Disagreement should lead to discussion, not division; however, it’s important to recognize when two parties have to agree to disagree.
Q: Do you support banning books?
Ekstrand supports banning certain books, depending on their age-appropriateness, but went on to say that it should be up to parents’ discretion on what they deemed appropriate.
Pettway supports the banning of books that teach legitimately incorrect information, as determined by education professionals. However, she does not support banning books to limit students’ access to factual information. The age-appropriateness of material should be determined by the school, and the community. Explaining a book to a child is more beneficial and effective than banning it.
Westerberg: The community should get to decide what books should be accessible to their children, but books should not be outright banned. Historical context should be provided with offensive content, and book collections can be curated to ensure they are accessed by students of an appropriate age. The concept of simply “banning books” is incredibly broad and should be approached on a case-by-case basis.
Q: Do you support age-appropriate curriculums that LGBTQ and BIPOC students can see themselves reflected in?
Ekstrand: She would support the idea, if it was deemed age-appropriate, though she stipulated that she does not agree with the LGBTQ lifestyle. She added, “Even though they choose to want to lead that life, we still have to love them.”
Pettway: Resources for curriculums that reflect BIPOC students are fairly available, but she would love to see more. LGBTQ students generally have a different set of challenges. LGBTQ is more than just sex, it’s about who you love and who you are. The history of the LGBTQ community in the US can be a dark and challenging subject matter to teach to kids, but it’s a part of their world, and hiding that from them is a disservice. If the curriculum was age-appropriate, she would support it.
Westerberg: Who determines the age-appropriateness of such a curriculum? Depending on the answer to that, the answer is “Maybe.”
Columbia Heights residents will also vote on an operating levy and a capital project levy for the school district in this election. An information session will be held Tuesday, Oct. 24, 6-6:45 p.m. in the Community Room at the Family Center.
For in-person voting on Nov. 7, ISD 13 has two polling locations: Highland Elementary, 1500 49th Ave NE; and Valley View Elementary, 800 49th Ave NE. Both are open from 7 am-8 pm. Early voting started on September 22. Absentee in-person voting takes place at the Anoka County Government Center or can be requested to be sent via mail through Anoka County Elections.