Four Carroll residents are running for the two at-large Carroll Community School District (CCSD) Board of Education seats on the Nov. 2 ballot, and one of them is incumbent, Jen Munson. Jen and her husband, John, have made Carroll home for the last 10 years, and they have two children. Their son, Drew, is a senior at Carroll High School, and their daughter, Abby, is a sophomore. Munson has a background in education that extends beyond her service on the school board. She was a teacher in Arizona prior to their move to Carroll and says that classroom experience was one of the main reasons for her decision to run for school board eight years ago.
According to Munson, there have always been challenges facing education, but she says CCSD stands apart from other similarly sized districts due to their intense focus on student needs and achievement. However, she says the issues they are seeing now are very different from her time as an educator.
She says these were issues the board was looking into prior to the pandemic, but progress was stymied somewhat by the pandemic. Unlike a lot of other schools in the country, Carroll was able to maintain in-person education during the 2020/21 school year. However, Munson says standardized test results show there are measurable education gaps caused by COVID, which the board, administrators and teachers are all actively working to fill. Part of that effort is hiring and keeping quality educators, and Munson says that has become a difficult task in the current job market.
She says part of that effort is ensuring the district has adequate resources to create an ideal educational environment for students and staff and incorporating new and innovative programs to that effect. Munson notes parental involvement is a key indicator of student success, and she says stakeholders should always have a voice in the decision-making process.
She cites the divide over mask mandates in schools as an example.
Munson is currently finishing out her second, four-year term and encourages anybody unsure about voting for her to look at her track record on the board. In that time, she says the district has built a new athletic stadium, expanded teaching staff and course offerings and improved its fiscal standing, all without substantial tax increases that were not approved by voters. The other candidates running include: incumbent, Duane Horsley; and newcomers, Kristen Lundstrom and Sani Saidou Salissou. Links to the other candidate stories can be found included below.
Kristen Lundstrom: Click HERE
Duane Horsley: Click HERE
Sani Saidou Salissou: Click HERE
