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The Wrecking Balls

At the July 28th meeting, the Board of Education undertook the yearly task of voting for board leadership positions. Anna Meinhardt, who has been the president for the last 2.5 years and Eric Hansen, the vice president for the last year, were nominated to continue in these positions for 2025-2026. Meinhardt declined the nomination, stating the majority on the board has taken a direction she cannot align with. The majority she is referencing are Eric Lawson, Sarah Costain, AJ MacArthur and Monica Dziesinski… The Wrecking Balls. In particular, she spoke of the “Bathroom Policy” these four are moving to implement and hiring Kallman Law Group as legal counsel for Alpena Public Schools (APS). Hansen declined his nomination for vice president, citing time constraints.

You know we are in deep trouble when good people step away from leadership positions. The leveled reasoning Meinhardt and Hansen provided are now given up to Lawson and MacArthur. The steady hands on the tiller, now in the hands of board members who voted down a grant-funded rain garden project, are moving to implement a “Bathroom Policy” that will incite an expensive lawsuit and hired an extremist law group, Kallman Law, to represent APS interests. Kallman Law, a two-person law group with no experience representing public schools, has a history of supporting legal attacks on public education and actively working to channel public education resources to private schools. These damaging decisions have cost us thousands in tax dollars.

Everyone knows what a wrecking ball is and what wrecking balls do… destroy and dismantle. The Wrecking Balls on our school board are doing just that to APS. They are saboteurs from within and they are doing it with astounding speed and consistency. And in plain sight. The Board of Education… now the Board of Buffoonery.

DIANE O’CONNOR

Alpena

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