Green Bay school board president will not seek reelection, cites 'personal and professional challenges'
GREEN BAY – The president of the Green Bay school board said Tuesday he won't run for a second term because of other constraints on his time.
Eric Vanden Heuvel was elected to the Green Bay School Board in 2019 and began serving as president in 2020. His term ends in the spring.
In a written statement, Vanden Heuvel said that he has "made the difficult decision to not seek a second term due to personal and professional challenges that require more of my time."
The announcement came about three weeks after Vanden Heuvel shared a message on Facebook stating that he would be deactivating his social media accounts due to security concerns.
"Unfortunately, I will be deactivating my school board and personal social media accounts indefinitely," he wrote Oct. 17. "Recently, the safety of my family was compromised based upon information people were able to gather on Facebook."
However, Vanden Heuvel said in a Green Bay Press-Gazette interview that those safety concerns did not play heavily in his decision to leave the board next year. He said he has been considering whether to seek another three-year term for around a year.
"The pandemic aside, a lot of my life has changed in the last three years — I got a different job, my kids got older and started to get more involved in more things," he said. "So when I sat down and looked at my next three years, I felt like from a time commitment standpoint it would have been difficult to serve on the board in the way that I would want to."
Asked about what prompted him to take down his social media accounts, Vanden Heuvel did not offer specifics but said the pandemic has been difficult for everyone and that he knew serving as school board president would come with certain challenges.
"It was a really rewarding experience and certainly was a great challenge, but I'm proud to have lent my services to the district and excited about what they are going to achieve in the future," he said.
Vanden Heuvel leads a board that makes policy decisions for Wisconsin's fourth-largest school district, the Green Bay Area Public Schools.
In addition to serving as school board president, Vanden Heuvel is vice president of talent and education at the Greater Green Bay Chamber.
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Contact Kelli Arseneau at (920) 213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @ArseneauKelli.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay school board president Vanden Heuvel won't seek reelection
