School funding and overcrowding front and center in Beavercreek School Board Race

The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity:

Jo Ann Rigano

Credit: Dez Santana

Credit: Dez Santana

Jo Ann Rigano has been an educator for 31 years. She has been part of the Beavercreek school board for 12 years, and its president for the last 10.

“The only thing that’s important to me is putting kids first. That’s all that matters to me, making sure our kids get the best education possible, making sure our teachers have the resources they need, you know, making sure we’re fiscally prudent with our taxpayer dollars,” she said.

If reelected, Rigano says she has one issue that rises above all the others: enrollment growth and the strain on existing school facilities.

“I see that as our main issue right now,” she said. “We need to get facilities somehow...Just because (the levy) was turned down doesn’t mean we’re not going to do something.”

Voters rejected a bond issue multiple times that would build a new Beavercreek High School, and would have caused a domino effect of changes, spreading the students out across the district’s buildings.

That model was developed alongside a group of roughly 60 community members in 2019. The district is planning to go back and develop a new master plan in January using a similar process, Rigano said, to try and find something else.

“We had business people. We had faith leaders. We had administrators, teachers, kids, parents,” Rigano said. “Bring them all back, see what they feel, the direction we need to go in, because something has to be done.”

As property tax reforms are weighed at the state level, Rigano expressed frustration at the lack of a clear alternative funding plan, as well as the absence of communication from legislators about how those reforms affect school districts.

“If you’re going to take Plan A away, then what is Plan B?” she said. “Nobody has given me an answer and that’s frustrating.”

Claire Chinske

Credit: VALERIE HAWKINS

Credit: VALERIE HAWKINS

Claire Chinske is making her second bid for the Beavercreek school board, having run in 2023, because she cares deeply about high quality public education, she said.

School funding is at the top of the list for Chinske as well, an issue that goes hand in hand with overcrowding. Addressing this means increasing communication between the district, lawmakers, and the community about the issues facing the district, she said, as well as effective long-term planning.

“The district’s already spending half a million a year on trailers. And that’s a sunk cost. It doesn’t serve them long term,” she said.

Chinske added she would support exploring a school income tax as a way to ease the burden on retirees.

“Unfortunately at the state level, I don’t see anything that’s happening that’s moving towards positive change, like expanding the homestead exemptions that would give retirees that relief,” she said.

Lastly, Chinske wants to address bullying, in part by engaging teachers to seek improvement in the district’s current character education programs, as well as auditing reporting procedures to ensure complaints are appropriately dealt with.

“That is a common concern that I’ve heard from parents is that things just don’t go anywhere,” she said.

Carl Fischer IV

Incumbent Carl Fischer IV is running for reelection to his seat on the Beavercreek school board.

“I have always been committed to finding ways to serve our community and passionate about education, especially science and technology education,” said Fischer, who holds a PhD in electrical engineering.

Ohio has lessened its support for public education over the years, Fischer said. He added that one of the board’s responsibilities is advocating for school funding, as to reduce the burden on residents, particularly seniors with fixed incomes.

“I think it’s important that we start to take a more assertive role as a school board, telling our legislators — sometimes publicly — that the state support for public education is inadequate," he said.

Fischer’s other two issues are increasing transparency around the board, and maintaining the district’s cybersecurity.

The district earlier this year implemented an online system of accessing its board documents, which replaced a previously byzantine system that parents and community members often struggled to navigate, Fischer said.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction towards making school governance more digestible and easily understandable. But more can be done,” he said.

Local government agencies are often targets for cyberattacks because they have sensitive information, Fischer said, and sometimes have outdated cybersecurity protocols.

“Beavercreek, fortunately, has a very strong cybersecurity posture, and that is something I believe we need to maintain because we host a tremendous amount of extremely sensitive data about all of our students and our employees,” Fischer said.

Nathan Boone

Nathan Boone is a third-generation Beavercreek resident, his mother and grandmother having both worked at Beavercreek schools. He said he is running for office in part because of his work with children, watching conversations about politics take precedence conversations about kids.

“Something I’ve noticed in my job is that when children don’t have stable housing, if they don’t feel safe, if they don’t have their needs met, then they’re not capable of learning new things,” he said. “And I think the bullying problem and mental health issues within the school system are growing out of control.”

Boone works as the Greene County juvenile public defender and says that he gets a “surprising” number of kids who are less bothered by the idea of going to detention than they are of going to school each day.

One solution, he said, is dedicating staff to solve disputes, handle student social dynamics, and bullying. Other districts, such as West Carrollton, have implemented this already and seen positive results, he said.

Regarding school funding, Boone said that people are reluctant to put more resources into the district because of negative public perception, which can be solved by better communication between the district and the public.

“We built a new school and we already have trailers in front of it. We were told that once the new middle school was built...that we wouldn’t need a new high school for a while, but immediately one was put on the ballot. And so I think people need to feel more trust and transparency with what’s going on with the board,” he said.

Krista Hunt

Krista Hunt is running for her fourth term on the Beavercreek school board, first elected in 2013.

“We’ve made a lot of progress on a lot of really good things, but there are things I feel that are left unfinished,” Hunt said.

The biggest of these is the district’s master facilities plan, which will be going back to the drawing board early next year, something Hunt said she hopes to be the board’s representative member for.

“The voters said what we proposed was too much and that’s fine. That’s why we put it out there. But it was based on a community conversation,” she said. “What’s another way that we can address that?”

The district has also improved its communication to the residents recently, but there is more that can be done, Hunt said, including keeping residents updated on legislative changes at the state.

“Even as somebody who’s very dialed in and very intimately involved with that kind of stuff, it’s just a lot to keep up with,” she said. “There’s a lot of things proposed that don’t happen or things that propose that do happen and get overturned.”

Regarding public frustration over property taxes, Hunt said she understands the frustration, but eliminating property taxes without a plan wouldn’t just harm the schools but other essential services. Additionally, Beavercreek board members have long decried the disparity in state funding between so-called “wealthy” districts like Beavercreek, and less wealthy districts like Dayton Public Schools.

“To say, ‘Let’s just omit all property tax tomorrow,’ that’s not a responsible decision,” she said. “I’d love to see our legislators come together and say, ‘Listen, property taxes are too high. How do we work towards dramatically lowering them or eliminating them?’ And that has to come from the state level because they’re just not willing to fund, especially districts like Beavercreek.”