School board welcomes members

While the school year is a little past its halfway point, the district’s core leadership has been shaken-up dramatically to begin 2015.

In its first gathering of the new year Monday evening, the Dowagiac Union Schools Board of Education welcomed three new faces to their ranks, as well as established a new slate of officers during a special organizational meeting. The four new officers elected were: Larry Schmidt, president; Ruth Ausra, vice president; Claudia Zebell, secretary; and W. Doug Kolmodin, treasurer.

Kolmodin is one of the newcomers to the board, along with Ronald O. Jones and Phyllis Sarabyn. Jones and Sarabyn will serve as trustees this year along with Ronda Sullivan, the former vice president of the board. Kolmodin, Jones and Sarabyn were elected to serve on the district board during the general election in November, ousting incumbents Michelle Helmuth-Charles, Beth Davis and Julia Smith.

The newly elected treasurer is a retired banker who served on various local organizations such as the Dowagiac Elks and the Dogwood Fine Arts Festival committee. Sarabyn is a financial advisor with Edward Jones. Jones is a retired educator with the district, serving as superintendent from 1990 to 1999.

Newly elected president Schmidt has served on the board for two years, elected to the board in 2012 alongside Ausra. Prior to that, he had served the district for 10 years as the director of the Pathfinders Alternative and Adult Education Program.

Following the organizational meeting, Deputy Superintendent Dawn Connor gave a presentation to the board about the strong performance of Dowagiac Union School in a recent study released by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, know as the Context and Performance Report Card. The high school received an overall “B” rating, ranking 155 out of 659 high schools in the state.

“That puts us in the top 25 percent of high schools in the state of Michigan, which I think is a really outstanding accomplishment,” Connor said.

Not only did the high school rank higher than any other high school in the Lewis Cass ISD, but it also outperformed those in other nearby areas, such Niles, Decatur, Eau Claire and Buchanan, Connor said.

“I’m really proud of how hard our staff, how hard our district works, to do really good things like this,” she said. “Whenever we get reports like this, it reaffirms that we’re doing good things for our students and that we’re making a difference.”