Pekin to hold special election Sept. 10 on making all school board seats at-large

PACKWOOD – Voters in the Pekin school district will participate in a special election next month to decide if they want to make all of the school board seats at-large, or keep the current format.

The special election, to be Sept. 10, will ask voters if they want to alter a residency requirement to be a Pekin school board member. Under the current setup, the school board consists of two at-large members and one member from each of the five districts that comprise the school district that includes Packwood, Richland, Ollie, Hedrick and a few other small towns.

If the ballot measure being proposed receives a majority vote, all seven school board seats would be at-large, meaning all board members could live anywhere in the district. The current law says that the school board member who represents District 1 must live in District 1, for example.

Superintendent Jeff Maeder said this special election is being called because of a petition that the school board received in July, which was signed by over 300 people. Maeder said this number of signatures met the requirement to call a special election, which can be obtained by getting signatures of 30 percent of the number of registered voters in the district.

The person who attested to the signatures on the petition was Erin Pedrick. Pedrick is a member of the group Pride in Pekin, and over a dozen of the group’s members collected signatures to put this measure on the ballot. She and other group members told The Union that they are seeking this change for a couple of reasons, one of which is that they feel the five districts are no longer necessary.

“Pekin is a consolidation of Richland, Ollie, Packwood and Hedrick schools over the years; but the last consolidation bringing Hedrick into the mix was over 30 years ago,” Pedrick and the other members of Pride in Pekin wrote in an email. “Why are we still looking at ourselves as five different towns, each needing our own director to represent our town? We are one school district, we are one school community and we need to start acting as one together. The school board should consist of our seven best individuals that can lead our district, no matter where they live within the district. We should not be limiting ourselves just because multiple people that would be the best leaders for the district reside within the same area. We should not be putting someone on the board just because they were the only person that ran in a specific district and we had no other choice, when another district had multiple highly qualified people willing to serve.”

The group also wrote that they wanted to solve another problem they see in the current law, which is that board members representing a specific district must resign their position if they move into another district, even if they remain in the Pekin school district. The rest of the school board must then appoint a replacement. The group wrote that forcing this turnover is not good.

“We should be looking to minimize turnover when we have a strong, dedicated and qualified individual on the board,” the group wrote. “This has recently happened - a very good, qualified, smart, dedicated board member happened to move to the wrong side of the highway and therefore had to give up his board position.”

Maeder said one point he wanted voters to know is that the proposed change on this ballot measure only affects where members of the school board must live. It does not affect which seats a voter can vote on. For instance, a voter who lives in District 1 can still vote for the candidates running in Districts 2, 3 and so on.

If this ballot measure passes, it would take effect July 1, 2025. Pekin’s school board elections are staggered, so not all of the seats are up for election each time. There will be three seats up for election in 2025.

  Buy Photo

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com