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The 2019 race for the
Toledo Public School Board is one to keep an eye on. At
least three Democrats will be competing for just two
available seats on the five-member governance board. The
Lucas County Democratic Party is receiving plenty of
blowback behind the scenes for choosing to endorse Sheena
Barnes, a relative political newcomer, over incumbents Perry
Lefever and Stephanie Eichenberg who are running for
reelection.
Does this sound familiar?
It should.
It is similar to what
happened two years ago when three Dems also ran for the TPS
Board. Then, the Party endorsed two candidates but community
activist Ruth Leonard became the odd person out, falling
short in the election despite the Dems’ endorsement and
support.
Given the dynamics of this
race, it is important to obtain the perspective of the
candidates. This week incumbent Stephanie Eichenberg shares
her experience since being elected to the Toledo Public
School Board in 2015. This is the first of our two-part
conversation.
Perryman:
You are a candidate for the schoolboard once again. Please
share a little of your personal history with our readers.
Eichenberg:
Sure. So, I am a Toledoan, born here, raised here. I
graduated from Bowsher High School and went to Northwestern
University and then I came back, married my husband and we
stayed in Toledo. I live in South Toledo now and I worked
for 20 years in market research before I was on the school
board and I still continue that job, so I’ve been in that
business for 24 years. My daughter started school in 2012,
and that’s when I started getting involved as a PTO parent,
and then, as you know, the next thing I did was to get
interested in the TPS performance audit because although it
was about education, it looked a lot like what I might see
at work. That’s how I got started.
Perryman:
How does your career in market research connect with what
you do as a board member for TPS?
Eichenberg:
Well my focus in the market research world is on sampling,
an issue I’m sure you are familiar with all the extensive
studies that you’ve done. A lot of times when you think
about sampling you’re always thinking about the impact on
data, both the demographics and other influences it can
have. So, I bring a data mindset to the schoolboard and the
other piece is just having been out in the private sector
world for over 20 years now, I just see that things might be
done sometimes differently than we’re currently doing them
in the schools.
Perryman:
That’s interesting. You describe it as bringing a private
sector mindset to public education. I call it a mentality
of substantiation. Should there be more of that type
representation?
Eichenberg:
I think that some school districts have that, but not a
lot. I do believe that bringing that private mindset is a
benefit, but you wouldn’t want that to be the only mindset
on your board. I like the diversity of our board and our
backgrounds. Some are from the non-profit community, one is
a teacher, one’s a retired school psychologist. We have a
good mixture because when we’re thinking about the
non-education practices and what are best practices, I might
be able to contribute there. Our folks who work for
non-profits bring a really great perspective from other
areas. Then you look to the educator and the retired school
psychologist and you learn something about the education
process or you have kind of a reality check for us. I don’t
think our whole board should be business people. I’ve had to
learn a lot about education in the past four years.
Perryman:
What has been the change in the four years since you joined
the Board? Have things improved? Stayed the same?
Eichenberg:
We have had a big increase in graduation rate. Since I’ve
been on the board, we’ve probably lifted it 68 percent
across the district, which is pretty exciting. The other
piece is that we have had the community support and passed
levies. I’m actually really proud of that because I’ve been
on the finance committee and we know that we need to not
have to go back to the voters for five more years now
because of that. We have a good operating balance and we
don’t want to hold too much money, but we also don’t want to
risk instability. The other thing that I think is good is
our enrollment. It’s up over 1700 students in I think the
past five years, so probably 1200-1500 of those came in
while I’ve been on the board. And part of that is offering
diverse programming.
Perryman:
Talk about the diverse programming, please.
Eichenberg:
We opened the National Science Academy of Toledo (NSAT),
which is pretty exciting and that was just last year. We
also took two neighborhood schools and remade them as STEM
schools. It helped to put fresh energy into the two
neighborhoods and schools. Then we also took the Jones
Leadership Academy, which had been started, but we made that
an academy of business to really bring that career tech
mindset to it and it helped them focus.
I do think those are great
examples of diversity programming and we’re going to see
more of that as we open our SMART Academy, Escuela SMART
Academy – Spanish language magnet school, the Toledo SMART
Academy coming into a district from being a charter school,
so that’s another piece of that diversity.
So, in addition to opening
schools, we’ve also brought our athletics. That was a big
blow to the students when those were cut in the past because
of economic reasons and I think we continue to try to
upgrade our facilities there and be able to offer more
sports. It’s a really important piece to support the kids
in as well as supporting the arts in the building. I won’t
take credit for this idea, the Fine Arts Festival started
since I’ve been on the board, but that was Ms. Varwig’s
idea, but it’s one of the neatest things we do because it
gets kids in elementary school thinking about how they can
do the arts in high school and what that means to them. So
that’s just another way that I think of engaging that
student in getting them to care about all of school because
they care about that one part of school.
Perryman: You attended the
recent Libbey High School Historical Marker dedication. At
the time that the board decided to close Libbey, I, along
with the late Jack Ford and many others, had advocated to
keep it open. Those efforts ultimately failed, but there
have been whispers about reopening Libbey sometime in the
future. Mr. Edward Drummond Libbey was a great industrialist
and philanthropist in this community. What are your thoughts
on the future of another school to honor Mr. Libbey?
Eichenberg:
Well, I think that one of the things we have to pay
attention to is we are continuing to see enrollment
increase, and so we just have to think carefully about would
we have students to support another school and would it be a
comprehensive high school or would it be more of a specialty
thematic school sort of like NSAT. Those are the kinds of
questions we would have to answer and I think it’s really
early to say who would have answers for that, but we know
there are certain neighborhoods that got left behind as
schools closed over the past. When we think about is there a
gap in offerings for that particular neighborhood, there may
well be. So, you really have to figure out what does the
neighborhood need and is there something we’re missing in
the district overall that we really need.
Perryman:
I did my elementary schooling at what was called then,
Gunckel School. That school is there today, but it is now
called Jones. So, the Libbey name doesn’t necessarily have
to be affixed to a new high school, it could be an
elementary school, middle school or even to an existing
school building.
Eichenberg:
Yes, and I know we’ve talked on and off about do we have the
focus on the arts and, for me, when I think of Libbey, I
used to be a docent at the museum before I had two children
and couldn’t keep up with it anymore. I always think of the
huge contributions Mr. Libbey made to the arts and to the
Toledo Museum of Art, and that’s something that maybe could
be a part of it. I do think it’s interesting, just like you
brought up both Jones and Libbey were kind of located in
that area and are gone and I just think that there’s still a
pretty good population there, so we really have to look at
how are we handling enrollment and figure out if it is
neighborhood based.
Perryman:
What did you learn from your first term on the schoolboard
and how do your insights inform a second term if you’re
reelected?
Eichenberg:
Well, I learned a couple of things that are really
important. The first is no change is ever as simple as you
think that it is and the second is that there are a lot of
people who work for us who really know what they’re talking
about and what they’re doing. So, the way that would inform
a second term is that I would like to make sure that we are
inclusive as possible. There is so much talent among the
people that we employ and there’s a lot of good ideas about
how we can operate better. It’s a matter of getting them all
together, finding an easier way to share those ideas is what
I would like to see so that then we can take new ideas and
really go forward with them.
(See part II next week
where Eichenberg discusses the District’s challenges)
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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