Appeal Tribune Wednesday, March 29, 2017 3A
Board
Continued from Page 1A
tel Corp., and he now
farms blueberries and
works part-time as a farm
safety adviser and project
manager in Hillsboro.
His educational back-
ground includes engineer-
ing classes at Chemeketa
Community College and
George Fox University.
He’s happy with the
district’s
graduation
rates, its “high expecta-
tion of kids” and its teach-
er-to-student ratio. On the
other hand, he’s extreme-
ly concerned that Silver
Falls’
standards-based
grading system is unclear
and ineffective, and he’s
unhappy with unfunded
mandates being handed
down by the Oregon De-
partment of Education.
Among them, he said
he’s worried the mandat-
ed Next Generation Sci-
ence Standards could wa-
ter down science educa-
tion.
He’s said he’s personal-
ly invested in improving
safety at the district’s
campuses, which requires
fencing, locks, security
cameras
and
other
changes.
He’s a regular advo-
cate of local control of
community schools. Rath-
er than centralized bud-
geting, he appreciates the
district’s practice of let-
ting each principal set his
or her school’s budget.
At the state level, Lier-
man said revenues are up,
and the legislature has the
money to fund public edu-
cation adequately if it
chooses to. Gov. Kate
Brown’s proposed budget
would cut $1.7 from the
Silver Falls School Dis-
trict, an outcome that he
said can be avoided if the
legislature allocates mon-
ey to schools instead of
other programs.
Jennifer Traeger, 42, is
a longtime
public
school
teacher
with deep
connec-
tions to Sil-
verton’s
Traeger
Montessori
communi-
ty. She teaches at Lincoln
Elementary School in
Woodburn, where she co-
ordinates the 800-student
campus’ programs for
students who are talented
and gifted, and also for
those who are learning
English as a second lan-
guage.
In 2008, Traeger start-
ed and operated Bluebird
Montessori Preschool to
serve her daughter and
other students; she closed
the school in 2015. She also
helped establish Commu-
nity Roots Charter School,
a public charter school in
the Silver Falls district
that instructs its students
using the Montessori
method.
“School choice is a real
strength of this district,”
she said. “I’m a personal
fan of the K-8 system also.
It presents challenges, be-
ing spread out in so many
locations like that, but I
think each school brings
something unique to the
district.”
Traeger said she’s not a
politician but wanted to
run for the school board
because she can bring a
teacher’s perspective to
its decision-making. After
working with students for
20 years, she said she
knows how day-to-day op-
erations go in public
schools. She also has ex-
perience with what she
calls “special popula-
tions,” such as students
who are homeless, gifted
or non-native English
speakers.
While she’s never held
public office, she does
have experience budget-
ing – for her preschool
business and at a local
school. Personally, she
also holds bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in edu-
cation, from Portland
State University and Wil-
lamette University, re-
spectively.
“I want to be a voice for
every child, and I think
I’m in a good position to do
that,” she said. “People
ask me for advice about
education, and they’ve
trusted me with their chil-
dren. Now I’m asking
them to trust me in setting
policy.”
Jim Newkirk also filed
to run against Lierman
and Traeger but didn’t re-
spond to calls from the Sil-
verton Appeal.
Zone 5:
Central/Southern
Aaron Koch, 39, is cur-
rently vice
chairman of
the board.
He’s been
on the job
less
than
two years
and
said
he’s
just
Koch
“hitting my
stride” when it comes to
school district business.
After running and secur-
ing a vacated position two
years ago, he’s earned a
level of expertise in bud-
geting and setting policy
that he wants to continue
offering to voters.
“I want to bring conti-
nuity to the board,” he
said. “I hope that people
see that I’ve stepped up
and provided leadership
to the board. I’d like to do
that for at least another
four years.”
Koch is former NFL
football player – he played
three years for the Jack-
sonville Jaguars – who is
now a regional sales man-
ager for a division of
Johnson & Johnson that
specializes in orthopedic
equipment. He’s the mar-
ried father of three chil-
dren who attend Silverton
High and Evergreen
School.
“We have so much good
going for us in this school
district,”
Koch
said.
“When you put things in
perspective, you see we
have such great teachers
and staff. We can always
do better, but we really
have something special
here.”
Koch is also tracking
legislative activity re-
garding public schools.
He advocates the state
legislature adopt a budget
between $8.40 and $9 bil-
lion to maintain or in-
crease public school of-
ferings, rather than the
$8.02 billion currently be-
ing proposed by the gov-
ernor.
He said voters made it
clear they want to fund
education with last No-
vember’s passage of Mea-
sure 98, created to fund
vocational training and
dropout prevention.
He is encouraging vot-
ers to contact their legis-
lators and then getting
ready to make decisions
for the upcoming school
year based on budget pro-
jections.
“My passion is to stand
for what’s right – and
stand for what’s right for
kids,” he said. “The kids
need to be our No. 1 moti-
vation.”
Koch’s academic train-
ing consists of a psycholo-
gy degree from Oregon
State University, where
he also played football.
Shelly Nealon, 45, of-
fers voters
five years
of experi-
ence as a
classroom
teacher and
a lifetime of
volunteer-
Nealon
ism
in
schools and children’s
programs. She and her
husband, a surgeon, own
Nealon Medical Proper-
ties, a private practice in
town.
The couple has lived in
Silverton since 2001, ex-
cept for a two-year period
when they moved back to
Nebraska to be with fam-
ily from 2011-13. Two of
their children attend Abi-
qua Academy in South Sa-
lem. Their son is a junior
at Silverton High School.
Nealon has already
started visiting Silver
Falls schools; a personal,
hands-on approach is
something she promises
to keep up if she’s elected
to the board. The district’s
practice of inviting prin-
cipals to report to the
board every few months
isn’t enough, she said.
“I want to be present in
these schools,” she said. “I
want to be able to go to the
school, talk to the princi-
pals and the teachers …
just to be an engaged lis-
tener.”
Nealon has a bachelor’s
degree in education from
Creighton Jesuit Univer-
sity in Omaha, Nebraska,
and was an elementary
school teacher and tech-
nology coordinator in
Kansas City, Kansas.
Since coming to Silver-
ton, she said she’s been
“extremely fortunate” to
be able to work a mini-
mum number of hours for
her family business. Rath-
er than opting to work
full-time, she’s spent the
past years volunteering at
her children’s school and
in the community.
Locally she’s served as
treasurer, board member
and concessions coordina-
tor for Silverton Junior
Baseball, as well as help-
ing the YMCA develop a
program for K-2 children
to play soccer at Eugene
Field. She also served on
the committee that over-
saw the remodeling of the
Silverton Pool.
Her time and availabil-
ity are commodities that
she’s offering to Silverton
voters, pledging to visit
local schools and outside
districts to gather ideas
for doing business here.
Her concerns about
Silverton schools range
from the upcoming bud-
get shortfall to classroom
populations. (Full classes
are the reason she didn’t
put her kids in school
here, she said.) She also is
concerned about the turn-
over among school admin-
istrators. (Both the high
school and middle school
principals are resigning
this year.)
“I will be a different
kind of board member,”
she said. “I offer my time,
my drive and my research
skills.”
Zone 2: Northeast
District
Ervin Stadeli, 54, has
served on
the school
board for
eight years.
He’s a long-
time Silver-
ton
resi-
dent; his an-
Stadeli
cestors
came to the area in 1902,
and he’s lived here his
whole life, except for a
two-year stint working in
North Dakota during the
Great Recession.
One of eight children,
he started his first busi-
ness at age 19, one year af-
ter graduating from Sil-
verton High School. While
attending classes i
n heavy equipment op-
eration, he started a
Grade A dairy on his fam-
ily’s farm. He sold the
dairy after four years and
bought 40 acres of his own
while still in his early 20s.
“Those were some ex-
hausting years,” he said.
“On my way to class in the
Portland area, I’d have to
hang my head out of the
window to stay awake.”
In 1995, he started his
own excavating business,
Stadeli
Underground,
which he operated until
last year, when he sold to
K&E Excavating. He now
works as a superinten-
dent.
His current project is
the new highway inter-
change
in
Newberg,
which is scheduled for
completion this fall.
Stadeli said a lifetime
in the construction busi-
ness prepared him to help
the board oversee its own
construction
projects.
There have been many in
the recent past: the new
high school, the old high
school’s transition to a
middle school, and seis-
mic improvements to K-8
schools.
“My daily tasks have
involved money and per-
sonnel, hiring and firing,
and
evaluating
con-
tracts,” he said. “In the
next four years, we’re go-
ing to be making big deci-
sions about our facilities.
I’ll help make sure we get
the best deals.”
Stadeli’s children came
up through Silverton
schools, and they’re all
young adults now. But he
still wants to serve on the
board.
Along with being able
to discern the details in
contracts, he said he
wants to “empower staff,
not micro-manage them,”
because he’s convinced
teachers are often the big-
gest influence in kids’
lives.
“You see so many kids
today who don’t have sta-
ble homes,” he said.
“School might be the only
structure these kids will
experience.”
Michele
Stone-Fin-
icle, 41, is the develop-
ment direc-
tor
for
NWV Habi-
tat for Hu-
manity
with past
experience
in educa-
Stone-Finicle tion.
She
and
her
husband, a high school
science teacher in Stay-
ton, moved to Silverton
from Idaho four years
ago. They have a first-
grader
in
Silverton
schools.
Stone-Finicle has the
distinction of being the
first college graduate in
her family. She grew up
“extremely poor” in Wim-
er, where her parents ran
a gas station. Later she
moved to the Willamette
Valley, where she gradu-
ated from high school. She
attended Chemeketa and
Portland State, earning a
bachelor’s degree in Eng-
lish and a teaching certif-
icate.
She first put her de-
gree to work in Tillamook,
where she taught expelled
and suspended students
for two years before mov-
ing on to teaching English
at the high school.
She and her husband
left Oregon for Idaho to
take on the task of helping
expand Sandpoint Char-
ter School – an alternative
Science Technology Engi-
neering, Arts and Mathe-
matics (STEAM) school –
into a high school.
The couple returned to
Oregon to be closer to
family after the birth of
their daughter. Now, in
her job for Habitat, she
writes grants, finds fund-
ing and connects local
businesses to projects re-
lated to affordable hous-
ing.
Stone-Finicle wants to
join the school board to
start making the kinds of
business connections for
the district that’s she’s ac-
customed to making for
Habitat.
State-level
funding
problems aren’t going
away anytime soon, she
said, so she’d like to part-
ner with local businesses
to round out hands-on edu-
cation offerings.
She said Silver Falls
could be more aggressive
in its pursuit of grants,
from the Meyer Memorial
Trust and others, to fund
technology training, PE,
music and other things.
Silver Falls is doing a
lot of things right, she
said: “I love the communi-
ty and the teachers. They
work hard, and they do a
lot in the classroom.”
But she’s anxious for
the district to make a
clearer plan for meeting
the mandates now being
handed down by the state.
Next Generation science
standards are due to be
adopted now, wants Silver
Falls to spell out a plan to
make that happen.
For example, she said
brand-new
curriculum
isn’t necessary; teachers
can simply get trained or
be given supplementary
curriculum that lays out
experiments that go along
with existing curriculum.
“I would like to be
elected because I think we
need someone who’s been
in the classroom making
decisions for our kids,”
she said.
A new player
The school board election is non-partisan, but the race has
taken a new turn with involvement from a brand-new political
action committee.
Silverton Opportunity – created by women, for women – is
actively supporting Traeger, Nealon and Stone-Finicle.
Founder of Silverton Opportunity, Naseem Rakha, said she and
the two other women who registered the PAC with the state
are “upping the game a little” because they want to see more
women in leadership positions in the community. Their
financial involvement is beginning in this race for school
board, where all seven members currently are men, but their
intent is to fund and support female candidates for other
community roles in the future.
“We just thought it was a very good opportunity to bring
some balance onto a board that obviously is dealing with a lot
of issues of diversity in our schools,” Rakha said. “Our
formation also came out of a national election that was
incredibly sobering for women … we are looking for ways for
women to have a voice in politics.”
The three incumbents expressed general frustration over the
organized political committee but didn’t speak directly about
Silverton Opportunity. Lierman, who’s been on the board for
20 years, did say he’s never before seen local PAC involvement
in a Silverton school board election. All three expected to
spend less than $750 each, according to their campaign filings.
Politics notwithstanding, the candidates all said they’re
running separate campaigns, and they hope voters will make
decisions based on each person’s merits.
“I love the community and the
teachers. They work hard, and they do
a lot in the classroom.”
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