Victories shift St. Paul school board's makeup

St. Paul's school board election this week added two well-connected women to help guide the district through challenging times. The victories of Vallay Varro and Jean O'Connell shifted the composition of the board to a majority of women and racial minorities.

Once the new members are sworn in, the seven-member board will have four women. Its racial makeup will be two Asian-Americans, one American Indian, one black and three whites.

O'Connell, 57, worked for 3M for 34 years as an engineer, manager and director of community affairs, among other positions, before retiring recently. She is a lifelong St. Paul resident and a graduate of Central High School, as well as the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Varro, 33, is education policy director to Mayor Chris Coleman and the sister of state Sen. Mee Moua, DFL-St. Paul. She has bachelor's and master's degrees in education from the University of Minnesota and has taught at the University of St. Catherine. She took flak during the campaign for sending a child to private school, responding that St. Paul's complicated school choice system kept her from getting the school she preferred.

Even before the election, St. Paul schools were steeped in diversity -- from the classroom, where three-quarters of its teachers are women, to district headquarters, where its top three leaders are women -- one black, one white and one Hispanic. District officials plan to spend $1.4 million over the next two years to improve the ability of its entire staff to operate in a multicultural environment.

The election was "a reflection of the voices of St. Paul," said Varro. Three of four students in the district are children of color, but race and gender weren't factors in the election, she said. "We were all just putting ourselves out there as candidates who really cared about the schools."

Diverse backgrounds

O'Connell said she had thought more about the gender part of the equation. One of the first female engineers at 3M, she recalls frequently being the only woman in the room. "From my perspective, the school board has been more diverse than most of my corporate experience," O'Connell said. "So that change won't be as significant as it might have been if it were a corporate board."

O'Connell said she is also looking forward to working with school board members with diverse backgrounds. "The real challenge is to listen to each other," she said, and to avoid stereotyping people as representing one racial or ethnic group because they are a member of that group.

Still, Keith Hardy, the lone black member of the board, said he wishes it also had a Hispanic member. "It's very disappointing that with the number of Latinos we have in our schools that we don't have a Latino on our school board," he said.

The lack of a Hispanic member came up during discussions over the closing of Roosevelt Elementary School in St. Paul's West Side neighborhood, home to a concentration of Hispanics, Hardy said. The composition of the board reflects the candidate pool, and civic leaders will work to encourage Hispanics to run in the future, he added.

Goal is student achievement

Hardy, Varro and O'Connell all said working to raise student achievement should be the board's primary goal.

Diversity expert Glenn Singleton, whose San Francisco-based firm consults with school boards and administrators and currently is working with Minneapolis and west-metro districts on their integration plans, agreed.

"We have an overwhelming number of cases in our society where we see that diversity does cause stress," said Singleton. "Board members must continue to remind themselves what their calling is, and that they need to create the best environment for students."

Gregory A. Patterson • 612-673-7287