Meet The School Board Candidates: Ron Kath

This is the third in a series of Q&A articles with the candidates up for the South Washington County School Board.

There are . We continue today with incumbent Ron Kath, and will take the weekend off before picking back up Monday.

The election is Nov. 8.

Ron Kath, Cottage Grove

Kath graduated from Simley High School and the University of St. Thomas with an accounting degree. He works in the Consumer Brands Division at the Schwan's Food Company.

• Accounting degree from the University of St. Thomas
• 26-year business career at Schwans Consumer Brands
• Eight years on the South Washington County School Board.
• Held the positions of president/treasure and secretary at Christ the Lord Lutheran Church.
• Married for 26 years with one son that graduated from Park High School.
• Active in many booster clubs and co-curriculum activities.

I currently support the renewal of our expiring operating levy(s). It is too early to ask the residents for any more than a renewal. In this economy, we need to first work with what we have. We also need to reallocate our current funds from one area to another based on performance or need.

Continue to create a budgeting process that looks for the opportunities to reallocate our current funding. We need to end the deficit spending.

Our fund balance is now depleted and the only way to balance the budget with out any new funding is to begin to either cut programs or increase class size. I am committed to do anything I can do to prevent either of these events to happen.

Short-term goal is to balance our budget without cutting programming for our students. Eliminate our current deficit spending. We currently weathered our shortfalls due to our effort to build a fund balance.

Long-term goal: Help set policy so that our five-year strategic goals can be set. I am also committed to developing a better long-term process when establishing choice program options.

To see the new strategic plan—igniting a passion for lifelong learning. I want to use my experience and fiscal knowledge to balance our budget. I want to find ways to keep our choice programs going and I am committed to not letting class size increase.

These next four years will be very challenging; the district needs strong leadership. I feel I bring that strong leadership to help guide us through this tough time.

State funding continues to be our biggest challenge. I will continue to be a good steward of our funds.

I am proud to have been on the board that established a fund-balance policy. This policy helps the district to refinance our bond debt and to receive a higher bond rating, thus saving the taxpayers of South Washington County Schools millions of dollars.

State and federal mandates: We need to continue to lobby for local control when it comes to programming and testing.