What's next for HSE? Blogger 'Larry in Fishers' on the changing dynamics of the school district

Three women won seats on the Hamilton Southeastern School Board on Election Day. 

Sarah Parks-Reese and Suzanne Thomas were reelected to their seats while Latrica Schooley will join HSE’s board for the first time in January. 

The outcome of the race halted a solid, conservative majority on the school board although that sway remains. Thomas is conservative. 

WFYI’s Rachel Fradette spoke with longtime Fishers blogger Larry Lannan or LarryInFishers last week to discuss what’s next for HSE, how this freshman board will get things done and what the election reveals about Hamilton County. 

Listen to a version of the interview at the above link. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Fradette: You've seen Fishers through several elections and changes of hands. Is it safe to say HSE school board races – five to 10 years ago – were not as competitive as they are now?

Lannan: They were competitive in a different way. It was more of a personality sort of thing, you know, knowing people knocking on doors and that sort of thing. But there were fewer culture issues at that time. Most people talked about the growth in the school system at that time. We were growing. That's leveled off here in recent years, but the agency school system is the fourth largest school system in the state based on enrollment. Enrollment has gone down just a little bit, but it's still high. So dealing with this enrollment as fast as it was coming at that time was the big issue, and you'd have to say HSE handled it pretty well. The academic standards have stayed fairly high all throughout that period, and it was once that the buildings no longer had to be built that the issues changed and focused in different directions.

Fradette: So what were some of those things that kind of changed direction that you noticed?

Lannan: As you and I both know there were some culture war issues that have emerged over the last five years. The first time I noticed that was right around 2019. The board was looking at a non-discrimination policy, and the non discrimination policy they had didn't was not up to date. The board was looking at one was about to pass it when two local teachers came to a board meeting, a regular board meeting, not many people there. I was the only media person. They said, we don't think it's strong enough. So the reaction by the board was, well, let's send it to the policy committee. Sort of a thing you would happen when you get a controversial issue before you. But it stayed there for a year or two. When it finally came back, it became a bigger issue, and the board at that time, in 2019 passed a non discrimination policy on first reading that caused a controversy in the community. Many people did not think it was strong enough, particularly with the LGBTQ community. But there were other issues as well. That's when a group, which still exists, began to organize. They never called themselves HSEqual, and they were trying to move the board into a stronger policy. So when that first policy was passed, it was a first reading, it had to pass a second reading, a second separate vote by the board, and it was quite a controversy that really got statewide attention. When the final board vote was scheduled, there was media from all over, and there was a stronger, more strongly worded policy to protect groups that felt they needed protection. That was when the culture wars began. After that, people on the other side of the issue began showing up at school board meetings talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, attacking that, looking at some of the books in some of the schools, the sorts of things you're seeing unfortunately in a lot of suburban school districts like HSE, really around the country, and that's when we started to see things change at the school board election. And I think 2022 was when we first saw that.

Fradette: So let's get into who won in this year's HSE school board election, the women – Sarah Parks-Reese, Latrica Schooley and Suzanne Thomas – swept the men who were endorsed by Fisher's One, a conservative organization that backs Republicans for government in this Hamilton County city. What did you think of the election day results?

Lannan: First thing I thought about was advice I received from some former school board members, all three men, who said women who run for school board, particularly at Hamilton Southeastern, have an immediate advantage. For some reason, the voters in our district where I live and where my children went to school, K through 12, they all seem to automatically think that a woman will be a better school board member than a man. It's not necessarily true, but I think it is a feeling that people have whether it's correct or not. So they all knew the three women who were running had an advantage to start. And I mean, I just tell you what I feel just talking to people that I know all around the community, is that people in HSE, fishers and the outlying areas that are HSE, really do not want to be part of the culture wars on any side. They just want their kids to be educated, and they want to do the best job they can. And HSE has high academic standards. I mean, I've sat through many work sessions of the HSE school board for all these 13 years. I would go into school board meetings, and I would have to say, overall, everybody has problem areas, but overall HSE schools do a very, very good job academically. So that's where people want to focus, making sure their children are going to get the best opportunity for an education. And I think they would rather talk about that than talk about some of these culture issues, whether no matter what side or you know, in the middle that you happen to be, I think most voters really would like to stay away from that.

Fradette: So were you able to catch the school board forum we co-hosted? Did you take anything away from that forum about each of these candidates, and did you think some performed better than others?

Lannan: Well, I have to admit that I do a podcast series as part of my blog, and I had already interviewed all six of those candidates, one on one for 30 minutes, so I already had kind of sized them up that way, and my audience got that but it was audio only. You had a video production there. Of course, the people there, which I understand, you had a nice crowd, that's that's great to see. But as far as that's concerned, I do believe that you get a certain impression when you see somebody on video. And we are living in a culture where people not only see television, everybody's got a video production for anything. You go on Tik Tok, you go on YouTube, everybody, I will say, everybody. But way more people than ever before have some sort of video presence. So you think about that, people do pay attention to your video presence. I will say some candidates came across better in video than others. And whether that should be the deciding factor is an interesting question. Should that be the way you evaluate a candidate, how they're able to get across their point of view on video, and how they interacted with I thought that was an interesting way you set that up, because you had, you know, three pods, and the candidates, the opposing candidates, sat next to each other, and what if any interactions between the two of them? I think all that came across very clearly. And I don't know if anybody got an advantage or not, but I think the three women who won certainly did well.

Fradette: The race between incumbent Thomas and former school board member Terry Tolle, really captured me because it emerged as a conservative versus conservative race. Thomas defeated Tolle with more than 60 percent of the vote. What do you think happened there? Do you think the public wanted to go with the incumbent, the incumbent, or was it something else?

Lannan: I was very surprised that Terry decided to run again for school, but I got to know him very well when he had his previous term, and his basic reason for running that first time was to make sure that there was a referendum and that the schools had sufficient funding. And he was the one who was most involved with that, and he also had a lot of political contacts. He would go to the State House. He knew a lot of people in the Republican Party, and was able to get across the views of the HSE school district to try to advocate for them at the state house. And as you all know, state law, state, state, the state legislature, has a lot to do with how schools can and cannot do things now they're funded. So I was surprised he came back again. I think there was a group of people in Fall Creek Township that wanted somebody to run against Suzanne. I don't know why, but I think he was the one that they urged to come and do that. But Suzanne is a very good campaigner. So is Terry, by the way, but Suzanne ran a very good campaign four years ago, I thought, and did, did so again this time. So both of them ran the best campaign they could. But I think that, you know, Suzanne just ran a little bit better campaign this time. And again, she had that advantage of being a woman, and so for some reason that helps you in the HSE school board race.

Fradette: The winners will join the board in January. Currently, the board has a conservative majority, and Thomas furthers that ideological sway. I think people forget that she's very vocal about being a Republican. We got to know a freshman board in 2023 after that slate from Fisher's One cleared house and brought in four new faces. They had some challenges. I don't think that's unfair. What do you foresee this new board looking like?

Lannan: Interesting, when you evaluate school board candidates, you know, people look at issues and what they say, I look more at what sort of judgment do they have. How many people that served on that school board, 2020? Ran on handling a pandemic, you know, but you cannot foresee, how many people ran on non-discrimination policy during that campaign, when that ended up being the big issue, they did not foresee coming at them. So the biggest test for the new board members is what kind of judgment they use. Sarah is an incumbent, and Suzanne's an incumbent, and we have the four that are still there. You know, the four that were new two years ago have kind of passed things around their own way. There were a lot of rumors Suzanne Thomas, when 2022 election was over and the new board took over, that Suzanne would be the president of the board, but it was Don Lang, and now we have Juanita Albright.

So the board will reorganize again in January, and we'll see. And there's still four votes that are the majority of the reason that's the case is that we have district elections every four years where everybody runs in their own district. We'll have that two years from now, and that's where the four majority members came from. But in this past election, it's run differently. It's the at large election where you have to live in your Township, but everybody in the district votes on all three township elections. That's what they call it, at large. So it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. Suzanne is currently an officer of the board who will be the next board president. I don't know. Dawn Lang and Juanita Albright.

If I as a reporter covering the meetings, they run the meetings very well. And I've been to meetings that are not run well, and they go on and on for no reason, but I have to say they have done well at managing that, and most of our board presidents have done that. They keep it tight, they keep a tight timeline, and they do what needs to be done, and then move on and adjourn. And that's the way a meeting should be run. So I think the community appreciates that when they show up or they're watching on a video, they appreciate a meeting that's that's run well, I mean, you get everything done, everybody has gets to be heard under the rules, and then you make you vote, and you move on. So I'm going to look for that kind of judgment that those new members are going to have as they face whatever issues are going to come up. The ones we know are coming, we have a redistricting coming up with a remodeling of the Fishers Elementary School. That building was the first Fishers High School eons ago, when fishers was a teeny, tiny town, farm, town of a few 100 people, but now that's been totally remodeled. We'll take on more students, so there will be a redistricting that's one of the most painful things a school district can go through. And these new board members, none of them have been through that. So that should be exciting.