Fairfield school board candidates participate in forum

FAIRFIELD — Fairfield residents got to hear from the candidates for the Fairfield Community School District Board of Directors during a forum Tuesday night at the Fairfield High School Auditorium.

The candidates discussed their background and experience, as well as their thoughts on important issues such as what to do with the Fairfield Middle School, the district’s mask policy, and the prospect of mandatory COVID vaccination.

Eight candidates are vying for three seats on the board. The three seats up for a vote on Nov. 2 currently belong to Frank Broz, Debi Plum and Kelly Scott, though only Scott is seeking re-election. The other contenders are Kelly Thompson, Alex Kessel, Mark Porter, Paige Novak, Tai Ward, Wade Stremsterfer and Cody Bauer. Thompson was absent from the forum.

A member of the audience asked the candidates if they agreed with the district’s mask policy. In September, a split school board voted 4-3 to require masks for all faculty, students and staff whenever the CDC guidance for Jefferson County calls for them.

Bauer said he was in favor of the mask mandate, and likened it to the common school policy of forbidding peanut butter to protect those children with severe peanut allergies. He said the district’s COVID case rate had dropped since the board implemented the policy.

Kessel said he did not like the mandate, and that the board took away the metrics it was previously using to determine the mask policy and imposed a mandate anyway. Novak and Porter also disagreed with the decision. Porter said he’d like to see a more flexible policy where masks are recommended when children have to be near each other.

Scott, who was one of the no votes on the board, said he also favored a flexible policy, perhaps one where masks would be required at one building but not another based on its COVID statistics. As a teacher in the Ottumwa school district, he said he wears a mask when he’s talking to students individually but takes it off to address the whole class so he can be heard better.

Stremsterfer said the district does not realize the harm the mask policy is having on kids, and said his son in elementary school was scared to go to school because he didn’t like masks.

Ward said he credits the district’s mask mandate last year for keeping COVID cases low.

A member of the audience asked the candidates their thoughts on mandatory COVID vaccines for students. Every candidate said they would not support a COVID vaccine mandate for students. However, some said the board might not have a choice if a mandate was imposed by an agency above them.

The candidates were asked for their opinion of the recently failed bond vote to spend $34 million, most of it going toward the construction of a new middle school. Bauer said the building is “bordering on not being safe” and that something must change.

Kessel said this is the issue that prompted him to run for the board. He attended one of the community meetings held before the bond vote, and felt that the district’s need for a new building was not explained well.

Novak said she agreed that something had to be done about the middle school. Porter said he voted for the bond measure, but agreed with others that the district should have communicated its needs better with the public.

Kelly favored the bond, too, and said the district cannot continue to make repairs at the middle school because it is “not set up for the 21st century.” He said that if the district tries another bond in five years, the cost will probably balloon to $40 million.

Stremsterfer said he didn’t think the district went about replacing the middle school in the right way, and can understand why the vote failed. Ward said he feels the middle school needs to be replaced, and sees building a new middle school as a way to drive economic development by getting young parents and teachers to move to town.