Jacksonville School District 117 is losing a Board member 5 months before her term is set to expire.
Current Secretary of the District 117 Board Corinne Wagner announced at the October board meeting that she will be submitting next month a letter of resignation for her position on the board.
Wagner has taken a position as a career counselor in the Saint Louis University Chaifetz School of Business and will start at Saint Louis University on November 26th.
Wagner explains her path to becoming a District 117 Board Member.
“In December of 2014, several people in the community suggested that I might be a good candidate for school board, mostly because I’m not originally from the area and didn’t have any kids in the district so I didn’t have any bias or agenda. Demographically, I was a little bit younger than some of the Board members have been, so I thought it was a great time. It was a big ask, but I thought I was ready for the challenge. I was elected in April of 2015, and we have been doing things in the district non-stop since then.”
Wagner has worked at both local universities, MacMurray College in the past and at Illinois College currently and says she says she will cherish her time in Jacksonville.
“The hard decision we had to make about 8-points Charter School. That was a really hard time for the Board and for the people associated with that school. Most recently, the challenge was the redrawing of the boundary lines. I think, from the community standpoint, that this process was very successful. I was really proud of how that process was handled, because it was so transparent. We tried to be as equitable as we could be. Now that the sixth graders are at the middle school, the numbers are looking pretty good. It’s just been a lot of change in the district, and I’m very proud to have been a part of these changes. Not being from the area, I feel like now I can kind of claim Jacksonville as a home, at least in some regards.”
Wagner describes her new job as her path takes her to Saint Louis.
“I started looking for work in the St. Louis area because life is taking me there. I started thinking it would take a long time, but finding this opportunity happened much faster than I was expecting. This will be very awesome for my career, because it allows me to accept all the responsibilities that I have learned to love during my time in the education sector in Jacksonville.”
The next meeting of the District 117 Board of Education, during which Wagner is expected to present her letter of resignation, will be Tuesday, November 12th.