Mike Hickey elected president; Peter Mandel elected vice
president
Morgan Hill – A changing of the guard for the Morgan Hill School Board occurred last week as former board Vice President Mike Hickey was elected president and board member Peter Mandel was elected vice president.
“First and foremost I want to thank my fellow board members for electing me … as any one of them could fill the roles, I’m guessing it was based on looks,” Hickey joked last week. “As a board president, I hope to bring a unique perspective. My four children attend three different schools in our district. The impact of the decisions we make will affect my children as well as all the children in the district.”
The focus of the board will not change as Hickey takes the gavel from former President Shellé Thomas, he said.
“One of our main goals is increasing academic achievement,” he said. “I believe one of the best ways to achieve this is technology. We need to provide an education to our students that will allow them to compete in a world market. This was one of the reasons we brought (Superintendent Alan) Dr. Nishino to Morgan Hill, because of his successful use of technology in his prior school district.”
Mandel also emphasized the importance of student achievement as visualized by the board.
“The board in general is trying to continue the shift of our focus into student achievement,” he said Monday. “We have spent a lot of time focused on construction; now we’re really shifting that focus.”
For the past five years, much of the business of the board has been tied to several major construction projects, including building the new Sobrato High School.
“We can now finish up the construction phase of our lives,” said Mandel. “Sobrato has just a few small things here and there to be finished, the work at Los Paseos is just about done, and the plan for completing the renovation work at Live Oak is in place. I think we’re all happy that we can start shifting that focus.”
Since 2000, the district has also built a new elementary school, Barrett Elementary, completed several major renovation and construction projects at Live Oak High and spent considerable time wrangling with problems regarding their relationship with Barrett builder Jacobs Facilities, Inc., which included a lawsuit.
The majority of the funding for these projects, with the exception of the renovation and construction of a new multi-purpose room at Los Paseos Elementary, was provided by a $72 million bond passed by Morgan Hill voters in June 1999 on the third try. Mandel alluded to another possible bid for help from the community at large.
“Within a focus on achievement, we need to look at where our resources are, whether we have the financial resources that our community and kids deserve to raise that level of achievement. We need to reach out to the community and see if it wants to allocate more resources for education and for our kids. We’ll be having that dialogue.”
Hickey said with the new superintendent and changes in the District Office, the district is entering a period of growth and potential.
“This is an exciting time for our community,” he said. “The new superintendent brought with him two assistant superintendents, and they bring with them bold new ideas. In the short time they have been here, the landscape has already begun to change. We have much to look forward to.”
