Madison School Board Election: MDL Candidate Questionnaire

Here's a special campaign feature: my responses to the MDL school board candidate questionnaire! Reporter Chuck Clement is compiling the answers for publication in next week's MDL, but you can read and respond to my answers right here, right now. Chuck's questions appear in italics; my responses are indented. I also invite my fellow candidates Jay Niedert, Paul Weist, and Tammy Jo Zingmark to do the same. Jay, Paul, Tammy, e-mail me your responses to Chuck's questionnaire, and I'll add them as separate posts here on the Madville Times, free of charge.
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Questionnaire for Madison Central School Board Candidates
questions by Chuck Clement, Madison Daily Leader answers by Cory Allen Heidelberger, school board candidate
March 19, 2008

Name: Cory Allen Heidelberger

Age: 36

Family: My wife Erin and I have one two-year-old daughter, Katarzyna.

Occupation: Graduate research assistant at DSU, speech contest judge, artist

How long have you been a resident of Lake County? Lake County has been my legal residence since I was two months old.

What civic organizations do you belong to?

• Treasurer, Speech Communication Association of South Dakota
• Volunteer, bacteria monitoring project, Lake Herman
• Treasurer, Lake County Democratic Party

What public committees have you belonged to?

• President, Lake Herman Sanitary District

The Madison Central School Board is currently reviewing its trimester schedule. Do you feel the district should continue with class schedules in this format, or should scheduling change to a semester format?

I prefer semesters. Working in Madison's trimester system and then in Montrose's semester system, I felt that students and I were less rushed under the semester system. Class periods are shorter, but a full semester of class meetings allows more time over the weeks and months for review and for the unexpected. Semesters give students more opportunities for taking distance learning classes, DSU classes, and band and chorus.

A committee proposed the construction of a new gymnasium at the high school in 2007. The voters rejected funding plans for this project. Do you feel a new gym is necessary for the district? If not, why? If so, how would funding be accomplished?

I sided with the 57% of voters who said no in 2007. Immediately after the election, I proposed a Plan B that would have pursued private donations and sponsorships to expand the gym. A bigger gym would be nice, but from the perspective of school board duties and public dollars, it falls behind other priorities like renovating the high school to improve the academic environment and safety, maintaining services for students affected by the AIM High cuts, sustaining competitive wages, covering growing staff needs, and expanding other educational opportunities.

The state will require mandatory kindergarten by 2010. What are your thoughts on districts eventually being required to offer preschool as a mandatory requirement?

We’re a long way from a pre-K requirement. This year’s Senate Bill 26 would have created state standards for preschool while leaving attendance completely voluntary. Even giving that much authority to the state over preschool was too much for many opponents, and the State House killed the bill.

I wish every family could afford to have one parent stay home with their little ones full-time. Unfortunately, our economy requires so many families to have two incomes that we need good pre-school options. But I’m not ready to require 2–4-year-olds to go to school, and neither is the Legislature.

A Sioux Falls elementary school recently proposed teaching Spanish as the primary language to children in elementary classes. Is this something you would advocate for the Madison school district?

It’s probably a moot issue for Madison, due to size: we likely can’t afford to hire the extra language-trained staff necessary to replicate a program like the optional Spanish immersion program due to start at Rosa Parks Elementary in Sioux Falls in 2009.

That said, we should expand our foreign language offerings. Research and experience show that the younger students are, the better they learn new languages. Plus, students who take foreign languages do better in English and math. To compete in the global economy, our kids need all the foreign language we can give them.

Do you feel there's a need to change the district's current disciplinary policy? If so where?

Discipline is first and foremost the teacher’s jurisdiction. Then it goes to the administration, and only then, occasionally, to the board. If the disciplinary policy needs any changes, the people who know best are the teachers who are the frontline enforcers of it and the students (and by extension, the parents) who labor under it. The board should listen to those people, make reasonable rules and revisions as necessary, and then make sure those rules are enforced justly.

The newest challenge facing the Madison Central School District, and surrounding districts for that matter, is finding the necessary funding to sustain the AIM High alternative school. This program has historically been partially funded by the South Dakota Department of Labor, but that agency recently announced that funding is being pulled for the next fiscal year. With budgets being an ever-pressing concern, how will districts find the resources to fully fund this program?

We have a year before the state plans to cut the matching funds: that’s a year to persuade them not to do it or find another funding agency.

Hope and persuasion are good, but we also need a Plan B. We should fully review the program and its outcomes and decide how—and whether—we want to sustain it. If funding falls through, we may have to scale back, team up with other districts, or consider other alternatives. We’ll have to be open to all possibilities and look for the best solution for the students.