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ONAWAY — An upturned school board can work amicably as it deliberates in the best interest of children, winners of a Tuesday election said.

Voters on Tuesday chose four new members for the seven-member Onaway Area Community Schools Board of Education, retaining one current board member.

High vote-getters Lorrie Kowalski, James Rieger, and John Palmer, all filling partial terms, will join the board at its December meeting. Erin Chaskey, elected for a full six-year term, will join in January, according to board president Michael Hart, also winning a six-year term on Tuesday.

Jessica Chandler, who received enough votes to win a partial term, learned before the election that she can’t serve on the school board because of a work-related conflict. Chandler will not be sworn in as a board member, and the board will appoint a replacement who will have to run in the next general election, according to Presque Isle County Clerk Ann Marie Main.

Chandler’s seat does not automatically go to the person with the next-highest number of votes, Main said.

During heated public comment times at several recent school board meetings, community members chastised the board with accusations of teachers allegedly pushing political beliefs and allowing bullying behavior in classrooms.

The new board will have to set aside any hard feelings and work for the best interest of students, several newly elected board members said.

Change — even the big change of a near-complete board revamp — comes with challenges, but the board will keep working to better the lives of the community’s children, Hart said.

“The board is a body, and board members are cells,” he said. “We have different cells than we were born with, but it’s the same body.”

The departure of several board members in recent years led to the partial terms that resulted in a higher than usual number of seats up for election this year.

Six candidates — including Kowalski, Rieger, Palmer, Chaskey, Chandler, and Kenisha Perkins, who did not receive enough votes to win — appeared on campaign signs together but did not intentionally campaign together, Kowalski said.

The board’s four newcomers have different opinions and won’t necessarily vote in unison on board matters but shared a common worry about the direction of their local schools, Kowalski said.

“We were in agreement that we definitely had to do something,” she said.

A sub who has worked in Onaway classrooms, Kowalski said teachers have not reigned in the bullying, dress code violations, inappropriate touch, and other unacceptable student behavior she said she has seen there. She wants to make sure teachers enforce policies to keep such behavior under control, for the sake of the students, Kowalski said.

She doesn’t anticipate animosity between the new board members and those retaining their seats, including Jeremy Veal, who did not have to run in this election.

“I’m sure it’s not as easy as we think it’s going to be,” she said, acknowledging that the new members have a learning curve ahead as they figure out what a board can and cannot do.

Rieger, whose term will end in 2024, hopes to improve board transparency and communication with the community.

Residents who spoke at recent meetings didn’t feel heard when the board didn’t answer them, and that’s something he hopes to fix, Rieger said.

Some community members, Rieger said, believe teachers push their political or social agendas onto students. Some say teachers use inappropriate materials, and some students feel belittled if they disagree with a teacher’s leanings, Rieger said.

“That kind of stuff should be left out of schools, as far as I’m concerned,” Rieger said.

The new board members will attempt to act quickly to address some concerns expressed by others in the community, including by insisting that teachers remove flags the new board members see as inappropriate, Rieger said.

The new board members may be surprised, Hart said, when they start their work on the board and learn that such bodies move slowly.

“Fast policy is poor policy,” he said. “Almost always.”

Adjustment to board membership can take well over a year, Hart said — and the position rarely matches people’s expectations, he said.

He applauded the “fire, vim, and vigor” of those running for the board for the first time, even if their views did not always align with his, and thinks their enthusiasm could be an asset to the board — but added that board members still have rules to follow.

At meetings, for example, board members couldn’t respond to speakers because of the rules governing such public meetings, Hart said.

The current board, listening to the ideas shared at meetings, recently decided to record those ideas and intentionally provide a response at the next meeting to help the community feel heard, he said.

While some meetings got heated — even, occasionally, “aggressive and hate-filled,” he said — Hart holds no ill-will against the people who lashed out against the board.

“They were more angry at the world around them than they were at us,” he said.

Hart said he plans to “be a civilized human being” when serving alongside Chaskey, who named Hart, along with other school and government officials and the school district, in a federal lawsuit.

Chaskey filed the suit after school officials banned her from school property when surveillance footage captured Chaskey filming a private meeting between school officials when she was in a school office.

Chaskey did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

Neither that conflict nor any of the tension leading up to the election should keep the board from working together for a common goal of supporting and improving their community’s schools, Hart said.

He will support the new members as they try to put their campaign promises into action, he said.

“I wish them well in that endeavor,” Hart said. “Who doesn’t want somebody to do well, and to do better, in a school board?”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.