Meet the Candidates: BOE Election 2021

Recent ROSE award recipient Jaime Bayes has been on the BOE since 2015. Bayes decided to run for re-election this year to improve education and support provided by the RSD. Bayes said if she were to be re-elected, she would want to continue to pursue initiatives that unify the school community, as she acknowledges there are divisions in the school district. Bayes said providing quality education that...

Tamarah Wagner has lived in the RSD area for 10 years, and said the current agenda of the BOE isn’t representative of what the community wants. Wagner said the plan for virtual education with the ongoing pandemic that was facilitated by the BOE was poorly executed and lacked transparency, but she is also concerned about bias and propaganda infiltrating student’s education.  “I believe I...

Sean Conover said he chose to run to ensure the BOE is continuously focused on the children of the community and on improvement.  Specifically, a problem Conover would like to address is equity in RSD and education. He said the demographics of students and educators are unbalanced and that people need to learn from each others’ cultures to properly educate young students. As a parent of a secon...

Former police officer Charles Keith Messmer said he decided to run for the BOE because decisions this year were made last minute, despite the district having the whole summer to plan for the upcoming school year. “There was no transparency at all,” Messmer said. “Parents were finding out things from Post-Dispatch or from the news. We're not finding out from emails.” Messmer said, from ...

Jackie Koerner said she has been thinking about running for the BOE for a while now, but chose to run this year because she feels like students’ needs aren’t being met.  The Gifted Education and disability services in RSD aren’t tailored to their students in a way that allows them to thrive, Koerner said, and it had been the source of frustration for some students. Koerner also is concer...

Tamara Jo Rhomberg, incumbent BOE member, has been on the BOE for four years and has served in education for 52 years.  Rhomberg said she is running for re-election because she believes in the BOE, and during this critical point in a pandemic, she wants to continue to work on the BOE and be part of the decisions. “I believe that having an incumbent that has an understanding of the history and ...

Candidate Terrie Desloge was motivated to run for the BOE because she said now with the ongoing pandemic, there is a bigger initiative to work on the educational, emotional and social needs of the students. “I think that we can't just go back to school and act like nothing happened,” Desloge said. “I feel like there are effects, socially, emotionally and academically, [with] all the remote...