Denise Chapman runs for school board seat vacated by Pam Howard

Denise Chapman, an information technology manager at TeamSite, a web management system, has registered her candidacy for the Thompson School Board.

Chapman

Chapman is running in District D, an open seat that board member Pam Howard has occupied since 2013, against Yazmin Navarro.

Howard, who was appointed to the seat when it was vacated, won reelection in 2015 and 2019, and is prohibited by term limits from running again.

As candidates and incumbents began to announce their intentions to run for the board over the previous few months, District D remained unchallenged, and with Howard unable to run again, questions began to arise as to who would attempt to fill the seat, and Chapman eventually threw her hat into the ring because “no one else would.”

Conversations between Chapman’s husband, who has been closely involved in education, and current and former board members briefly led him to consider a run, she said, but a new job and the stresses that come along with it prompted him to decide against it, leaving Chapman herself as the candidate.

“I talked with (board member) Dawn (Kirk) and Pam Howard and (former board president) Lori (Hvizda-Ward), and was promised lots of support, and realistically, I think I’m where I belong,” she said.

She has also known officials like Howard and Hvizda-Ward in passing, she said, and showed support for them in the past.

“Far too many people I respect fought really hard to bring this board back into something that works for teachers and students,” Chapman said.

Chapman has had two children go through the school district and two that are still in high school at Thompson Valley High School, and described herself as “very pro public education.”

Many of the district’s problems, she said, boil down to a simple lack of funding, beginning with facilities, and she cited a lack of air conditioning in many of the district’s schools, including where her children attend, as well as broader deterioration within the district’s buildings, some of which are over 100 years old.

Barring some kind of creative fundraising campaign, she said, a bond issue or mill levy override would be necessary to fix these problems, something district staff and current school board members have indicated they agree with.

But many problems, she said, are outside of what the schools themselves can do, and require community partnerships and broader community buy-in to succeed.

Focus, she said, is often on test scores, but not on the conditions that might lead students to score poorly.

“Yeah, if kids are hungry, they’re not going to test well,” She said. “If kids are not secure, they don’t know where they’re going to sleep that night? Not going to test well.”