Addison school board leadership mostly unchanged from 2023 following organizational meeting

ADDISON — Local school boards are in the process of conducting and wrapping up their organizational meetings that kick off the new year and determine the leadership of the educational board for the calendar year ahead.

Addison Community Schools’ Board of Education held its organizational meeting Monday in front of more than 20 members of the public.

Addison’s board leadership will remain mostly unchanged from 2023, the only major difference being trustee Lauren Bailey, who joined the school board July 31 on an appointment basis to fill a vacancy, was nominated and selected to serve as board treasurer. She was unanimously chosen for the position on a 7-0 roll call vote.

More: Addison school board names interim superintendent, appoints trustee

Andrea Woodring remains president of the school board. Jennifer Frost will keep her position as vice president, and Kim Ford was nominated and selected to resume as board secretary. Each of the board appointments were approved unanimously.

Thomas Arnold, Josh Perry and Scott Williams round out the remainder of Addison’s school board, which held its first regularly scheduled meeting since Dec. 18 when a standing room only crowd gathered at the secondary media center and raised concerns about staff and administration, as well as the direction of the district.

The Dec. 18 meeting heard comments from residents, staff, school board members and administrators, many of whom addressed discord and accusations on personnel matters, particularly in the athletic department. Athletic Director Josh Lindeman resigned from his position and accepted a new job at Napoleon Community Schools. He was the district's football coach for nine years and assistant principal and athletic director when he resigned.

More: Addison school board hears concerns about staff, administration; update from superintendent

Jessica Patterson, who has been the district’s interim athletic director since Jan. 5, was officially named as such during the board’s regular meeting of business, which followed the organizational meeting.

Only two audience members provided public comments at the end of the meeting, both with topics stemming from the board’s Dec. 18 meeting.

“I’m very happy with the way our meeting turned out this evening,” Woodring said. “I’m very proud of our board after attending conferences and seeing other (school) boards in their dynamics and hearing of their issues. I think our board has a unique set of skills. Everyone really brings something positive to the district and I’m very excited about that.”

Consistency and the board becoming more seasoned as it works together will help the district move forward, she said.

“With our new superintendent (Dan Bauer) kind of ironing out the bumps in the road, I think going forward we really have blue skies ahead of us, I really do,” she added. “I’m feeling very positive about that; consistency. We are getting more seasoned as a team. We were all new (to the board) at one time. I think that fortitude is going to help us going forward.”

The board showed its unanimous trust in keeping Woodring as president of the school board during the organizational meeting.

“I’m honored,” she said of being nominated and selected for another presidency. “I’m honored to represent this district and to be an alumna from here. It gives me a sense of honor and it's a privilege to be a part of something bigger for my community.”

As part of its action items during the regular meeting, the board approved the following:

• Designated depository banks for January through December being Premier Bank, Michigan Liquid Asset Fund Plus, Fifth Third Bank and MBIA: Municipal Investors Service Corporation.

• Authorized signatures for check signing on behalf of Addison Community Schools with those individuals being the board president and treasurer, the superintendent and the chief financial officer. Checks must have any two of these individuals’ signatures during 2024.

• Retained Thrun Law Firm, P.C., of East Lansing, to remain as the school’s legal consultant.

• Authorized the superintendent, the chief financial officer and the director of operations to be the sole users of the district’s credit card for 2024.

• Appointed Frost to serve as Addison’s representative to the Lenawee County Association of School Boards (LCASB) and Ford as an alternate representative.

Patterson ‘excited for opportunity,’ what she can bring to AD role

Having only been in the position for a couple of weeks, Patterson, who provided her first update as interim athletic director Monday, said she is excited about the opportunity and what she can bring to the position.

Her report, while somewhat slim in content, highlighted new chairs that were purchased from the Addison Athletic Boosters club and information about athletic events having to be canceled and rescheduled this winter because of a recent accumulation of snow days.

Patterson has experience as a varsity coach and teacher. She is in her 17th year of teaching. When she started as interim AD one of her first priorities was meeting with all the coaches and letting them know she plans to bring stability to the athletics program and begin the process of hiring a new football coach and staff.

More: Jessica Patterson named interim athletic director for Addison

Addison offers 13 varsity, four junior varsity and nine middle school sports.

“My immediate goal is to provide stability and forward direction for our student athletes, coaches and athletic programs,” Patterson previously said when she was tabbed for the interim role.

Coming from Adrian College, there is a lot Patterson can offer in the district, Woodring said. Patterson was an instructor in the teacher education department at Adrian College for five years and is the college’s director of cheerleading and dance. At Addison, she was recently hired as a kindergarten teacher for the first time. She spent 11 years at Addison teaching second and third grade and a half-year of art before leaving for Adrian College.

Her approval as interim athletic director was approved in a 6-1 vote with trustee Perry casting the lone “no” vote.

Prior to the vote, Perry clarified that his stance did not reflect anything about Patterson as an educator or as person, but that he was concerned why she was getting paid more — what he called a 60% increase in pay — as an interim athletic director than Lindeman was paid while serving as both AD and assistant principal.

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Bauer clarified Patterson is being paid for her work as athletic director at the same rate as Lindeman, but with additional pay to compensate for her teaching time lost during the school day.

As a kindergarten instructor, Patterson has so many hours of classroom time and prep work during the school day, Bauer said. Because she is taking on athletic responsibilities, too, her workload during the day has increased and she will likely lose some of her prep time to focus on athletics. There also is time she must devote outside of school hours related to the role of the athletic director, Bauer added.

— Contact reporter Brad Heineman at bheineman@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: twitter.com/LenaweeHeineman.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Addison school board leadership for 2024 mostly unchanged from last year