Longtime Edgar School Board memberfaces challenger

By Hannah Alden

With spring comes local elections on April 4. This year, the Edgar School Board is seeing one contested race between Vice President Gary Lewis and challenger Alison Reinders.

Lewis, who has served on the board since 1998, declined an interview with the Record-Review regarding his candidacy. According to Record-Review archives, at the time of Lewis’s election to the board, he had been a district resident for 28 years, with two children already having graduated from the district and another who was an Edgar High School senior at the time.

Reinders, a Medford native, moved to Edgar in 2007. Currently the director of contract administration for a construction company, Reinders has two daughters, one that’s an Edgar graduate now in college and another that attends Edgar Middle School. Her husband, Matt, works as an agriculture teacher for the district.

After getting her start volunteering in the community through the Edgar PTO from 2008 to 2017, Reinders has become more involved with the school district as the years have gone on. Along with helping the local FFA alumni association with things like football concessions, the June Dairy Breakfast and other chapter work, Reinders served as treasurer on the “yes committee” for the 2010-11 Edgar district referendum.

When another referendum came along in 2021 and ultimately failed, Reinders learned a lot of valuable information by listening to all of the points raised by community members. She was impressed when the district took that information into consideration when the 2022 referendum campaign started. Reinders still serves on the Community Advisory Committee formed during that year.

“Being a part of this last group, I got to learn more about the district finance,” Reinders said. “It’s vastly different than business or personal finance and I find it very interesting. Based on my career path and what I do, I enjoy digging into the numbers, the policies behind them and getting to understand.”

For years, Reinders has been thinking about running for an Edgar School Board position. She’s always talked herself out of it. But she’s now listening to the advice she often gives her 13-year-old.

“I find myself telling her a lot, ‘You are not on this earth to be small or quiet,’” Reinders said. “‘You can take up your space and you can use your voice.’ I thought I should listen to that myself.”

While Reinders praised Edgar school officials and the board for working well together and said she believes the district has been very transparent about how referendum funds are used, she sees finance as an ever-present challenge. Reinders said it’s hard for the district to plan ahead sometimes as some numbers for the budget don’t come in until after a new school year has started. She sees this as a bigger-picture issue without a “quick fix.” Additionally, Reinders wants to focus on creating more inclusivity within the community.

“I would love for people to feel like they can come to the [school board] meetings and speak their mind,” Reinders said. “Maybe it’s that they think it’s scary. It can be overwhelming.”

If elected, Reinders hopes that community members would feel comfortable discussing things with her that she could then take back to the board and pass information along. She said everyone has a place in building a strong, healthy community, regardless of if they have children enrolled in the district.

Reinders said she doesn’t look at the school board election as a competition, but rather an opportunity. If she doesn’t win in April, she’d run again in the future.

“Gary has great direct experience,” Reinders said. “I look at it as sometimes a different perspective is good, just to bring a fresh set of eyes to something. I feel a connectedness to the issues and to the schools.”