B.G. school board hopes for a new member with presence

Battle Ground school board President Steve Pagel and three colleagues will select a replacement for board member Karen Lehman on April 30 to serve through the end of Lehman’s term in December.

That appointee may run for election this fall to a full four-year term, as may other qualified candidates.

All standards and directions set by the board and Superintendent Shonny Bria are posted on the district website: http://battlegroundps.org.

Applicants must be registered voters and residents of District 2, within the Battle Ground school district boundary. That’s generally the area north of, and extending east of, central Battle Ground, from the East Fork of the Lewis River to as far south as Northeast 189th Street. (For maps, click on “School Board,” at left on district website.)

An orientation for applicants will be April 14. Applications must be received by April 20.

All candidates must sign a waiver releasing their résumés and related materials for public disclosure.

For questions, call 360-885-5300.

Battle Ground district leaders hope to soon fill the District 2 school board position abruptly vacated by 11-year veteran Karen Lehman, who resigned at the March 26 meeting.

Applicants are being solicited, with April 30 the target date for an appointment. The person selected would need to run for election this year if he or she wishes to retain the seat for a new, four-year term.

Among candidate attributes the board would likely favor: Someone who actually can attend board meetings.

Lehman’s chronic absence from board action, owing to work-related travel, became an issue during her final term on the panel.

When she read aloud her farewell statement to colleagues, it was only the sixth time since the start of 2010 that she physically attended a board meeting — a span of 20 meetings.

On six occasions, Lehman participated by teleconference. Four times, she was formally excused from action altogether. And four more times, official meeting minutes record her simply as “not present.”

The issue reached a boil on Feb. 26, when two board members opposed President Steve Pagel’s request to grant Lehman another excused absence. The motion failed. (Pagel said that Lehman, in all instances, gave him advance notice of her status.)

One month later, Lehman made it clear the vote had stung.

“Traditionally, when members of a board are absent, their absence is excused as a matter of course. … However, this professional courtesy has not been extended to me by two members,” Lehman read on March 26.

She didn’t name the pair: John Idsinga and Monty Anderson, Feb. 26 meeting minutes show.

But Lehman said she holds no grudge, had seriously contemplated quitting over the winter and that no one forced her hand.

“I had no nudges from anyone. I want to make that clear,” Lehman said six days after stepping down. “I just thought it was the best for everyone concerned.”

Lehman, 58, holds a doctorate in education from Washington State University and is a special education consultant and assistant college professor. A mother of three Battle Ground High School graduates, and first elected in November 1999, she now teaches at schools in Arizona and New Mexico, besides consulting within Washington.

She often teaches Saturday courses designed for students who work weekdays, she said. That conflicts with the Battle Ground meetings, nearly all of which have been scheduled for Saturday mornings or Friday afternoons the last few years.

It was Lehman’s uncertainty over future employment and her desire to not “create an undue hardship” for herself, the board and other district leaders and students that led her to resign “reluctantly,” she told colleagues.

She doesn’t find teleconferencing much of a detriment to “effective” service, she said.

“As a whole in Washington state, there are board members who call in all the time,” she said.

Unwanted ‘message’

Lehman’s former colleagues beg to differ.

“When she was at the meetings, she contributed greatly. She definitely was engaging,” said Anderson, a first-term member elected in 2009. “But when a fifth of the meeting is missing (one of five members), the whole of the district is not being represented — the views of that person and their constituents are not being represented,” he said.

Anderson said the absence of nonverbal communication and handouts that are often given out at meetings were “a damper” on that engagement; so were the occasional phone glitches. Despite the board’s often meeting only monthly, half the frequency at many local school districts, Lehman’s absence had become “habitual,” he said.

“It’s a public elected (seat). We should try to be at as many meetings as possible,” Anderson said.

Idsinga, like Anderson, said the February action wasn’t hostile.

“I just chose to vote ‘No’ this one time, because I want Karen there,” said Idsinga, who was also first elected in 2009 with Pagel and Anderson. He acknowledged that he, too, has missed some meetings. “Being there in person is really an important thing to the community, an important thing to the kids,” he said.

Pagel agrees on that point, though he supports Lehman “without judgment,” he said.

“I think it’s important … given the nature of this board, that we have someone who is able to be visible to the community,” Pagel said. “My take is, (Anderson and Idsinga) have become frustrated with her not being there, that it sends not a proper message.”

Valued contributor

Bottom line, Pagel joins the others in lauding Lehman’s long tenure.

Lehman departs leaving the district in much better shape than upon her arrival, with voters passing large construction bond and operating levy measures in recent years, to help Battle Ground escape fiscal peril. The board earned state recognition for its duty in 2005, she noted.

“The district’s come a long, long ways, and she and (15-year board veteran Sam Kim) have had a huge amount to do with it,” Pagel said. He didn’t detect any resentment of the new guard, either. “She had told me she was happy with the new board, the look of it and the direction it was going. I don’t think she has a problem with us.”

Lehman said she struggled with her decision, to the end.

“It was very hard. I put my heart and soul into that job,” she said. “I felt it was the best service I could do at that point, to step aside.” She wished the board good fortune, she said. “I hope they find somebody really awesome for my place, someone who’s devoted to the kids.”

Pagel, who runs his own landscaping firm, noted that the board can’t demand perfect attendance from applicants but certainly “will express that as a desire,” he said.

“I made a commitment to the Battle Ground schools and the community: ‘I’m a board member and I’m going to be there,’” he said.