The St. Paul Public Schools board will interview and select a candidate to fill a vacant board seat on Tuesday.
Five candidates will be interviewed to fill former board member Jim Vue’s seat on the seven-member board. Vue, who had served on the board since 2020, resigned effective Feb. 17. The new member will start on April 10.
Tuesday’s meeting is open to the public and will be held at 6 p.m. at the district’s administration building at 360 Colborne St. in St. Paul. It also will be livestreamed at spps.eduvision.tv/LiveSched.aspx.
The selected candidate will serve the remainder of Vue’s term as an interim board member through January 2027. The seat will be on the ballot in November and the new member will hold it for a four-year term. In order to be eligible for the interim position, applicants interviewing Tuesday must indicate they have no plans to run for a seat in the November election.
Board Chair Uriah Ward and board member Halla Henderson are the only board members whose terms end in December. Other current board members’ terms go through 2028.
The board, and SPPS administrators, work to establish a budget for the district. In June, the board unanimously approved a $1 billion budget for the 2025-26 school year. The board will vote on the 2026-27 budget no later than June 30. As of February, the district expects a budget shortfall of approximately $21 million for the 2026-27 school year.
Vue’s term was set to go through 2025 but was extended through December of this year due to a change in election years. In discussing his resignation, Vue said he did not plan on serving beyond his four-year term.
The board’s resolution to fill the seat originally stated that two to four candidates would be interviewed. However, board members voted last month to interview all five candidates.
Among the requirements, candidates must be a resident of the school district for at least 30 days and may not be an SPPS employee. Board chair Ward recused himself in February from the candidate selection due to a potential conflict of interest — candidate Lesley Lavery is the co-chair of the dissertation committee overseeing Ward’s doctoral dissertation at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga. He also abstained from the motion to interview all five candidates.
The candidates
Here’s a rundown of the candidates, who all live in St. Paul:
Robin Feickert
Feickert is a claims technician and training specialist with Wilson-McShane Corp., a financial services company in Bloomington. She has one seventh-grader in the district.
She is a former aquatics director and director of healthy living at the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities and former aquatics director with the St. Paul Jewish Community Center. She earned her bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College before attending dentistry school at the University of Minnesota. Feickert has volunteer experience with the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, the American Red Cross Twin Cities-area chapter and Special Olympics Minnesota.
Lesley Lavery
Lavery is a professor of political science at Macalester College with a specialty in K-12 public education policy. She also formerly chaired the college’s department of political science. She is a parent of two children in the district and was an elementary school teacher in California through Teach for America. She also has volunteered with the district.
Her research has been published in journals such as the ILR Review, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She also published a book in 2020 titled “A Collective Pursuit: Teachers’ Unions and Education Reform” through Temple University Press.
Lavery received her bachelor’s degree from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Brandon Lowe
Lowe is an assessment, data and research coordinator with the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district. He previously worked for Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Fla., as an assistant principal of instruction, assessment coordinator, instructional coach and teacher.
He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida in Orlando and his master’s degree in educational leadership from St. Leo University in St. Leo, Fla. He then received his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Central Florida.
Beth Mork
Mork is a hospitalist at M Health Fairview and a parent in the district. She previously worked at the Raiter Clinic in Cloquet, Minn., as a family practice physician. She is treasurer of Humboldt High School’s Parent Teacher Organization and has volunteered with West Siders for Strong Schools. She also has been involved in several district committees.
Mork received her bachelor’s degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and attended medical school at the University of Minnesota’s Duluth and Twin Cities campuses.
Carson Starkey
Starkey is a labor union organizer and financial secretary for the Northern Midwest Regional Council of Carpenters’ Local 2055. He has two children in the district and has volunteered in SPPS. He also teaches a class on the labor movement through SPPS Community Education.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and government from Minnesota State University Moorhead and his Juris Doctor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.
Starkey notes that he is an Iraq War veteran and public policy expert on his LinkedIn. He has worked on Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party campaigns and worked for the DFL during midterm legislative campaigns in 2010.
While in Illinois, Starkey was director of the labor union-funded nonprofit, the Illinois Fair Trade Coalition. He also was involved in University of Illinois Chicago free legal clinics.
He is a former member of the city of St. Paul’s Labor Standards Advisory Committee and former commissioner on the city’s Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity Commission.
Related Articles
St. Paul Public Schools district-wide online learning to end March 13
St. Paul Public Schools has spent nearly $1M on virtual learning, other support for immigrant families
St. Paul Public Schools executive chief of schools to leave district
Minnesota school districts, teachers union sue to block immigration enforcement near schools
St. Paul Public Schools, others cancel classes Friday due to frigid weather
Leave a Reply