Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

BERRIEN SPRINGS — Retired Brandywine Superintendent John Jarpe will get his seat on the Brandywine Board of Education sooner rather than later after the Berrien RESA Board of Education appointed him Tuesday to fill a five month vacancy on the Brandywine board.

Barring someone running and winning a write-in campaign for the open two year seat on the board this November, Jarpe was already scheduled to be elected to the board in November as he was the only person to meet last week’s school board filing deadline for the open two-year partial term.

Jarpe and two other local residents were interviewed Tuesday by the RESA board to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of board member Angela Seastrom in June. Brandywine board members interviewed four people for the vacancy earlier in July but deadlocked over picking anyone.

The others interviewed Tuesday were Ryan Candler and Shannon Daniels. They also interviewed before the Brandywine board in early July and have filed to run for one of the three four-year seats up for election this November.

In all, five people have filed to run for the three four-year board seats including incumbents Jessica Crouch and Holly Pomranka and challenger Jeremy Colby, the fourth person interviewed by the Brandywine board in early July. Incumbent board member Brian Burge is not seeking re-election.

Tuesday’s RESA interviews featured all three answering a series of questions from the RESA board including telling about their background, leadership experience, how they handled a difficult situation and the biggest challenge facing education. Candler served in the military and works as a mechanic. Daniels works in special education.

Jarpe noted that he started his education career teaching at Catholic schools in Detroit and Southwest Michigan before taking a teaching job at Brandywine. He then spent 19 years as an assistant principal and principal in St. Joseph before coming back to be the Brandywine superintendent for 10 years before he retired in 2017.

“I think I have something to offer the board and the district,” he said. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t recommend that a retired superintendent should serve on a school board but these are not ordinary times at Brandywine.”

“There has been some division on the board that has improved but there is friction between the board and the staff,” he added. “I have experience working with people and I think I do have the ability to get in there and help. I also want to give something back to the district I still love and with my experience in education, there will be no learning curve.”

He said that one of the biggest challenges facing public education is chronic absenteeism of students. “The pandemic aside, we have increasing numbers of chronic absenteeism,” he said. “We need to find a way to get kids consistently in school. The lesson we learned during the pandemic is that kids can get lost.”

Jarpe was not asked and did not talk about his recent recall effort against three Brandywine school board members. His recall language ended up being thrown out by the Berrien County Election Commission over clarity issues.

Jarpe did say after the meeting that he believes he can work with the current board even though he has criticized the three he tried to recall periodically over the year and a half since they took their seats. “I think we can get past all of that,” he said. “I’m a team player and we are all working for the benefit of the kids.”

A poll of RESA board members before the formal vote appointing Jarpe had him as the first choice for four of five board members. All of the RESA board members thanked the other two candidates and urged them to stay involved and to run again for the Brandywine board.

RESA Board Vice-President Andrew Robinson said board members chose Jarpe because of his level of experience in education. “Having a Master Yoda at the table will help,” he said. “He has the ability to be a bridge builder.”