Voters in the Deer Lakes School District will choose from five candidates to fill four open school board seats in the Nov. 2 election.

Four of the candidates are newcomers: Brian Brown, Jeremy L. Love, Jonathan Majernik and Traci A. Stotler. The other candidate is Kristi Minnick, who is seeking a second term on the board.

Three of the four school board members whose four-year terms in office expire at the end of the year — Philip Ziendarski, Vic Laurenza Jr. and Eric J. Bieniek — did not seek party nominations in the spring primary to run for reelection in the fall.

The candidates were asked what they believe is the most important issue they would like to see addressed when the new board convenes, what goals they have if elected and what they would do to improve communications with constituents and involve them in the decision-making process.

School board members are elected for four-year terms and are unpaid.

Brian Brown

Age: 39

Party: Democrat

Home: West Deer

Occupation: School principal

Education: Bachelor’s degree in communications, Robert Morris University; master’s degree in education, school administration and supervision, Duquesne University; school superintendent Letter of Eligibility, Point Park University

Previous elected office: None

Brown said the new board needs to focus on getting children back up to speed academically after the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.

“One of my primary concerns as an educator is making sure we address any academic issues students may have as a result of multiple learning modes that had them switching back and forth between in-person and hybrid,” he said.

Brown said testing and reviewing the data is needed to create an individual approach to helping students who might be struggling.

“We need to take an individualistic approach because every kid’s situation will be different,” he said. “We may have students who are a grade level behind, so we need to find out where they are academically if we’re going to help them.”

Brown said among his short-term goals is making sure the district is offering students a “rigorous curriculum” to ensure that it is academically competitive with other school districts.

He also would like to see teachers equipped with the tools to identify signs of mental distress among students that have come to the forefront because of the pandemic.

“We need to train our teachers and paraprofessionals to help identify signs of mental illness so we can refer them for assistance,” he said. “I’d like to see the district use some of the federal pandemic funds it is receiving to address this issue.”

Brown said his experience as a an educator coupled with the training he received to earn a superintendent’s letter of eligibility makes him well-suited to be a school board director.

“I have an understanding of school law, the finance process and school operations,” he said. “And I’m someone who can articulate complex issues so that it is understandable to the public.”

Jeremy L. Love

Age: 45

Party: Democrat

Home: East Deer

Occupation: Planner/Operations manager at Weleski Transfer

Education: Deer Lakes High School

Love said his long-term goal if elected will be to focus on the budget process to ensure that services are being provided without the need to increase taxes.

“I’ve looked over the budget, but I can’t wait to really get in there, dig into it to see what works and what doesn’t,” he said. “When looking at it from the outside, it can be easy to say this needs cut or that isn’t important. But when you get on the inside, it can be different.”

Addressing the academic lag that resulted from the pandemic shutdown and addressing the mental health needs of students because of the pandemic are among Love’s top short-term goals.

“I hate to say it, but I think a lot of kids have fallen behind in school and need to catch up,” he said. “We need to jump on that.”

Love said while the district already is discussing offering things including after-school tutoring, he is concerned that it will not be enough.

“Tutoring is a plus, but that’s something that we need to make sure that we keep going,” he said. “We are still requiring kids to be quarantined (when they are exposed to coronavirus), which means a lot of them will fall behind when they are out of class for 10 days.”

“There’s been mental health issues that have been overlooked for years,” he said. “But now we are beginning to see more children suffering from things like anxiety and depression because of the pandemic.”

Prior to the pandemic, mental health issues were primarily seen at the high school and sometimes at the middle school level “but now we’re starting to see it in kids in kindergarten. So we need to figure more ways to help people recognize these issues before they become a big problem.”

Love said one of the reasons he is running for school board is because “a voice for the people is lacking” and that he promises to be accessible to constituents.

Jonathan Majernik

Age: 42

Party: Democrat

Home: West Deer

Occupation: Vice president, national markets, Highmark

Education: Bachelor’s degree in business management, Robert Morris University

Majernik said the most important issue for the new board to address is the emotional well-being of students as they make the difficult transition back to school from the pandemic.

“Having three young children in the district, I’ve seen firsthand how challenging the past 18 months have been from both a developmental, emotional and academic perspective,” he said. “So I would really like to focus on those needs by having additional support and resources.”

Majernik said addressing the mental health of students is particularly important at the elementary level to help them catch up emotionally.

“Elementary is not only about learning your ABCs,” he said. “It’s also about learning how to socialize, how to deal with your peers and encouraging confidence. Those little things are important but children have missed out on a lot of that by not being in class consistently.”

Among his short -term goals is the establishment of a covid task force work group composed of community members.

“We have some brilliant people in our community who have a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise,” he said. “We also have a lot of folks who have very differing opinions. I don’t think school board meetings offer a healthy environment to tackle these issues, so I’d like to create a way for the community to have a productive conversation and learn from one another.”

Majernik said the school board’s guiding principal when communicating with residents and involving them in the decision-making process should be “transparency.”

“We not only need to provide a level of detail and information throughout the process, we need to be sure that we are allowing our constituents to offer their voices and be part of the process,” he said.

Kristi Minnick

Age: 51

Party: Republican

Home: West Deer

Occupation: Information technology director at WESCO Distribution

Education: Bachelor’s degree in management information systems, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Political experience: Deer Lakes School Board, 2017-present

Allegheny Intermediate Unit Board May 2021-present

Minnick said the most important goal for the new school board will be to “recommit our focus on educating our students and treat the pandemic as secondary.”

She said while the district didn’t encounter problems with transitioning to virtual learning because students already were furnished with computers and other devices prior to the pandemic shutdown, many students suffered from the change in learning environments.

“We know we’ve had some learning loss during the last two school years,” she said, noting that even though much of the standardized testing was skipped in 2020, some data was collected to support the need for remedial programs.

“We have at least one data point, the AP class exams, that shows the number of students who qualified for college credits was lower last year than in previous years,” she said.

Minnick said the district must take an individualized approach to helping students get up to speed.

“There’s no silver bullet for dealing with this,” she said. “All of our learners are different. We can’t say we’re going to offer tutoring and then not know what we’re going to do to help kids who may have lost out on speech therapy or those who are medically fragile and couldn’t attend classes.”

Minnick said among her short-term goals is ensuring that the district continues to be “fiscally responsible” and that the district’s finances could play a role in how well it is able to create “a stable learning environment.”

“Our teachers’ contract is up at the end of the year and we need to be sure that we do not have a labor disruption,” she said. “Our teachers have worked tirelessly through the pandemic, so we need to collaborate with them and maybe be creative to put together an agreement that we can support.”

Traci A. Stotler

Age: Did not provide

Party: Republican

Home: West Deer

Occupation: Health care

Education: Did not provide

Political experience: none

Stotler said one of the reasons she decided to run for school board is to counter the way the district has handled the coronavirus pandemic.

She said she would “absolutely” defy state orders requiring masks and contact tracing.

Even though students have returned to in-person instruction this year, Stotler said the district “has not returned to normalcy.”

“It’s insane that they still are being forced to wear masks and undergo contact tracing,” she said. “Show me a clinical study that proves that masking these kids in school throughout the day works and I won’t be such a skeptic. But there’s no proof.”

Stotler said the masking and other requirements are affecting students’ academics and mental health. As a result, she said, she pulled her three daughters out of Deer Lakes and enrolled them in a private school.

“How is it that students can eat lunch together and go to sporting events without a mask but they have to sit in class wearing one all day long?”

Stotler said she holds conservative views and hopes those who share them will support her candidacy.

“I think there’s a lot of parents who feel similarly to me, and I want to be their voice,” she said. “I’m not your typical politician. I’m pretty true to who I am and don’t mind fighting for the things that are important to me. And to me, the most important thing are the kids in this district.”

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