Tom Brungardt is seeking election to the USD 475 Board of Education.
Brungardt is a retired history and government teacher, and served two terms on the school board. He believes there is a problem involving not having enough teachers in the district, where where are 35 of them in classrooms who are not fully licensed. Some are student teachers in classrooms "without a cooperating teacher." There are others that are fully licensed but are not teaching in their subject matter area. "They are not teaching in the area of endorsement on their license. So we have a problem attracting people and retaining those people. We have a retention problem in our district and that's why I am running to try to solve that problem."
Brungardt noted that some have left the district and have gone to other places to teach or become an administrator even though they have a lower salary than they had in USD 475. They left this district and went someplace else. "That means there's something structurally wrong." He added that teachers can be attracted with the USD 475 salary schedule.
"Once you get them here you have to treat them in a way that they want to stay here. That's not being done." Brungardt added that there is a problem with morale in the District, and noted that morale is everything.
The election is Nov. 7.