With all four incumbent school board members not running for re-election as of last Monday, there were five candidates who filed to run for those four school board seats. Brian Davis, Lisa Hedin, Becky Beissel and Stephanie Malm are the four current school board members that will term out at the end of 2023, paving the way for four new members to be seated. The field of candidates doubled near the Tuesday, August 15 deadline. 

As of the Monday afternoon, there were five candidates; Matt Bruns, Matt Seeger, Mariah Ring, Brandy Wenztler and Pam Onnen. Late Monday, a sixth threw her hat in the ring, Nancy Blanchard. By the end of Tuesday, there were four more; Philip Biermaier, Melissa Millner, Jenny Wiederholt-Pine and Larry Hammer. Hammer removed his name from candidacy just a day later. 

Election day is November 7, 2023. That gives the residents of Independent School District 200 75 days to get to know these nine candidates to make the decision as to the four that are best suited to guide the school district for the next four years. 

The Hastings Journal will be reaching out with questions for each of the candidates to respond to and we will run a weekly candidate feature up until the week before elections. If you have questions that you would like asked of each of these candidates, please email bruce@hastingsjournal.news with your question. Please note that depending on the number of questions submitted, we may not be able to ask them all. We reserve the right to edit the question for brevity and omit any questions that are deemed inappropriate or unprofessional. Please submit your question by August 31 for consideration.