Newest member of school board says poor economy shouldn’t stop progress

Theresa Kriese may be the newest member of the Mitchell Board of Education, but she’s no rookie.

Kriese worked nearly 15 years at Mitchell Technical Institute, where she was that organization’s equivalent to a chief financial officer. She recently switched to Dakota Wesleyan University, where she is the vice president for business and finance.

Her years in the educational field have informed many of her current views, which she discussed this week in a wide-ranging interview with Daily Republic.

Among other things, Kriese said poor economic conditions should not stop progress, exceptional teachers are sometimes held back by their unions, and the school year should be lengthened.

Following are some of the questions and answers from the interview.

Q. A recent, unsuccessful lawsuit against the state by some school districts — not including the Mitchell School District — brought attention to the push for more state funding for education. Has that focus been lost with all the attention now given to the economy and the state’s financial troubles?

A. That happens. Any type of governmental or state funding where this year we don’t have a lot of money, you lose track of what’s going on. It’s kind of like the Longfellow project. (Mitchell’s old Longfellow Elementary School is being replaced with a new building.) You have to keep looking at the future, because you will never have enough money. I don’t have enough money in my personal budget at home. It doesn’t matter what we make. But you can’t stop growing and changing and building on the future, just because you don’t have enough money. It just means you have to get more creative and look at different ways.

Do I think it lost its focus? Yes, I think that with the term limits in the Legislature, we lose focus on a lot of things, because it changes so many people up there. I’m not saying that you can’t have term limits, but I think maybe ours are a little too strict, because you just get somebody broken in and they just get the idea of what their job is, and their term is up.

Q. What’s the next big financial hurdle for the Mitchell School District?

A. When the stimulus money is gone, if we haven’t as an economy recovered, that will be an interesting dilemma. You know, the state funding formula right now, the way it is, you get the cost of living or inflation or however you want to say that, or 3 percent — whichever is lower. Well, where we’re at right now, are they going to give us negative funding? Because, right now, cost-of-living is zero or negative. So, when the stimulus money goes away and if the state has to cut, they’re going to have to cut everywhere. Unfortunately, education is a huge part of the state budget, so they’re the ones that get the attention quicker.

Q. When people think about the state cutting funding to education, they often think of the result being that small schools will have to close or consolidate. How would cuts affect a bigger school like Mitchell?

A. You can’t do the same thing with less money. So, again, you’ll have to look at restructuring. What the board has done in the past is, and what I would hope they would do in the future, and I would help to do, is concentrate on the fact that the student is what we’re here for and the education of the student is what we’re here for. So, that’s where the focus has got to be.

Q. What do you think the future should be for the middle school’s indoor pool? (The superintendent and school board have decided to close the pool, which they say is too expensive to operate, but private groups are raising funds in an effort to save it or come up with some kind of alternative solution.)

A. The pool is a community responsibility. I’m not saying that the school doesn’t have a part in that; I just don’t feel the school has the sole responsibility of providing a pool for the community.

Q. But what should happen? Should the school close the pool? Should the city build an indoor pool? If that happens, should the school contribute to it?

A. Here’s my thoughts on the pool: When we put a $4 million (outdoor) facility in at Hitchcock (Park), we should have had the conversation at that time about how we’re going to address indoor pool facilities. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. We now need to get the parties back to the table. I think if the school’s going to incorporate it into the curriculum, if the city’s going to use it for swimming lessons, and if the swim club is going to use it, those three parties need to be at the table and they need to talk about what are we going to do for a facility, how it’s going to be maintained. And it needs to be a long-term thing.

Q. In addition to the pool, Joe Quintal Field needs work. Should that be pushed forward, or should that take a backseat to other financial issues that might arise because of the economy and potentially declining state funding? Won’t it seem distasteful to some, for example, if the district lays off employees while it’s rebuilding Joe Quintal Field?

A. Capital and general expenses are two different things, and the state says neither shall the two mix. So your capital projects, while you may be laying off people, you’re funding in two different ways. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but you can’t use capital outlay funds to staff, and you can’t use staff funds for capital outlay projects. … Any publicly owned facility, it’s always a challenge, always, to maintain and keep those and continually upgrade them, because there’s other needs in other areas, and it’s hard to get people to understand that their tax dollars have to go to keeping the facility up also.

Q. Do you think teachers are underpaid?

A. When you look at what people in South Dakota make in any profession versus what they make in some other areas of the country, teachers are probably comparable in that way. We have longevity in our teachers, so we have some that are compensated very well, just like in any organization.

Do I think teacher compensation could be better? I do. I think they spend an enormous amount of time with our youth, and they’re developing the next generation of leaders, and they have a huge responsibility. So, yes, they could be compensated better, but you know what, I could be compensated better. It’s a choice, it’s a profession.

Would I like to see something done about compensation? I think the school district has made great strides since I started working there in building up the entry-level positions, because that’s really where the compensation has lagged behind. I think if you look at the survey with the ESD schools, we’re right in there, we’re competitive.

But it’s a tough thing. From a taxpayer point of view, you look at somebody who works nine months out of the year and you say “Well, gosh, they have three whole months off.” But they work hard those nine months and they work over the summer. Just because they’re not in the classroom doesn’t mean they’re not doing work.

Q. Do you think teachers’ unions have a positive or negative effect on education?

A. Sometimes I think what happens with teacher unions is they’re about getting the same for everybody — equal treatment for everybody. And sometimes I think there are some people who do really extraordinary things who aren’t able to be rewarded for that, because of the way the unions are structured.

Q. You mean the extraordinary ones get held back?

A. Well, I think so. You can’t individually reward somebody who completely redoes their curriculum and is doing some awesome things in a classroom. They’re going to get the same raise as the person who comes in and didn’t redo their classroom experience for the student. And, you know, as an individual for whom compensation is a reward and something that could get them excited, it can be a little demoralizing, maybe. I don’t know that unions are bad, it’s just that that’s the reality of having a teacher’s union: Everybody gets the same, so sometimes those that are shining don’t always get rewarded.

Q. Would you ever be in favor of a four-day school week?

A. I have yet to think there are significant savings in a four-day workweek. Clearly, busing is one thing you can show, but your facilities still have to be maintained. You can’t afford to shut the heat off for three days and turn it back on. It just doesn’t work that way.

Q. Do you think there are adverse educational effects with a shorter school week?

A. Well, I’m a proponent of longer school years, and that makes me very popular among a lot of people (laughter). I think there’s a lot of loss in time not in school. Now, a longer school year doesn’t mean that you have to go all year-round, or even year-round school doesn’t mean you’re at school every day. It just means you put breaks at different times. You know, I went to school in Australia for a while, and they have a month off at Christmastime, they have a two-week break in May, a two-week break in September. They have breaks throughout. It’s not that you’re going to school 365 days a year. But you have that continuity of learning.

Q. Where does the district sit with its laptop initiative, and what’s your opinion of it?

A. I like the laptop initiative. Who knew that Gateway was going to blow up on us? That was an unfortunate occurrence, but I can’t say that I would like that to color the experience of laptops. I like laptop availability for the students, because I think for some kids, that’s their only chance they’re ever going to have at having a computer in their hands more than just a couple hours a day in a classroom. And I don’t think there’s anybody that can say that they perform a job that doesn’t somehow relate to a computer. Even the cash register at a store is more computerized that it’s ever been. You never see anybody with a crank cash register anymore. So it’s a reality that people have to be able to operate computers.

I have some personal reservations, and this is probably just my age, with the books on laptops. I’m an accountant, and accountants, whether they use computers or not, some days you just get out paper and pencil. I think there are some kids that learn really well that way, and just like anything else, there are some kids that don’t. So we as a school district need to be aware of that and make other opportunities available. But that’s no different than any other education tool. They are an education tool, and they need to be used that way. They’ll never replace the teacher.

Tags: school board, theresa kriese, mitchell school district, news, local, education