By Ben Chapman
benbart.chapman@gmail.com
In the April 2nd election, voters will select four board members from eight candidates to fill the Mahomet-Seymour School Board.
Lance Raver, Jenny Park, and Jeremy Henrichs are three incumbents campaigning to hold their seats, while newcomers Jason Tompkins, Colleen Schultz, Meghan Hennesy, Julie Cebulski, and Ken Keefe are campaigning to become newly elected members.
Four seats are open, and all voters will be able to select two candidates for each district.
Of the incumbents, Jeremy Henrichs and Jenny Park are outside the township while Lance Raver is inside the township.
The Mahomet Daily previously covered the newcoming candidates in this article.
The three incumbents, along with Jason Tompkins, are running as a four-person coalition under the title “Keep Mahomet-Seymour Strong!”
According to their website, the four candidates have decided to “campaign collectively” because they “share a common vision” for the school district.The website states that they “fully support one another, and respect each other’s ideas and values.”
There are four key goals listed that unite the coalition: student safety, academic excellence, fiscal responsibility, and continuing infrastructure improvements.
Henrichs says of his fellow candidates, “I think we have similar goals related to continuing good fiscal responsibility with the school. I think we share the same values when it comes to providing safety and security for our students and our staff at the school.”
Raver says that he respects the other members of the slate, and that they are “the type of people that I’m comfortable making decisions that impact my kids.”
While the coalition is working under a similar platform, each candidate has their own reasons for running.
Park says that while serving on the board is tough and often thankless, she enjoys it and is running because she believes that “[the school board] has a huge impact on our community and our children.”
Henrichs says of his seat on the board that, “It’s a very important position in the community. The schools are vital to the health of the community, and investing in our kids, our families, our students — that is what is going to help Mahomet thrive in the future.”
Henrichs adds his own take on the safety tenet of the coalition’s platform.
As a practitioner in the sports medicine field, he says, “A particular interest of mine is the health and well-being of the student athletes — I think that’s sometimes overlooked at the high school level.”
He noted that athletes put their bodies through impressive stress and he wants to make sure they are taken care of.
Raver says that as a parent of three daughters, safety would be his top priority, but he declined to expand further citing concerns over what safety-related information should be made public.
Raver referenced the “dark days of school funding” when local schools were dealing with fallout from state-level difficulties.
As Raver says, “There were prorations of payments, missed payments, and every district in the state was really being hit hard and being put in a difficult financial situation.”
Henrichs says that while some of the funding does come out of state level, “as far as planning for facilities, that comes out of sales tax, and we’re in a pretty good spot servicing our debt with the sales tax we have right now.”
During their campaigns, the candidates hope to meet voters and make their case in person.
Park said of her campaign that “It’s a grassroots effort, it’s being able to be personable, to be approachable, and to listen.”
Henrichs says that he believes face to face contact is essential, because “if people don’t know who you are or have not met you, then I think it’s hard for them to vote for you.”
