Five candidates are vying for the four Butler School Board seats up for grabs in the Nov. 8 election.

Running on the Republican and Democrat tickets are Linda Patten and incumbents Diane Snyder and Craig Lucas. The list of candidates is rounded out by Republican John Conrad and Len Schoettker, a Democrat chosen by his party after incumbent candidate Penelope Kingman moved out of state and resigned from the board.

A member of the school board for eight years, Diane Snyder said she continues to run out of concern over who is controlling local schools.A top priority for Snyder is tax reform. Although the issue must ultimately be dealt with by state legislators, Snyder said local boards need to help identify different means of tax reform, whether it comes in the form of earned income tax, sales tax or something else.Snyder is also concerned that the No Child Left Behind act has focused local education on preparing students to pass an assessment test, rather than overall education.

Craig Lucas, who has served on the board since 2000, agreed that too much focus has been placed on the assessment tests."I think it's a shame that the state puts too much emphasis on it," Lucas said, but he supported the original idea of the tests, which he said could be used to measure progress and hold schools accountable.Snyder and Lucas both take issue with unfunded federal and state mandates. Snyder said 85 percent of Butler's annual budget is used to fulfill such mandates that aren't funded by the state or federal government.But while Snyder said there should be fewer mandates, Lucas had a different suggestion."If they're going to mandate them, they should definitely get the funding," he said. "If they want us to do it, they should write us the check."

Candidate Linda Patten agreed that funding state and federal mandates is the biggest challenge facing school boards now. Like Snyder, she said that there needs to be some form of tax reform but that Act 72 "was not the right way to address tax reform on the state level."Patten served on the district's Act 72 advisory board and advised the board not to opt into the program, calling it a "tax shifting" program instead of "tax reform." Schools opting into the program would have received revenues from legalized slot machines in exchange for a mandatory earned income tax levy.Another issue on Patten's radar is curriculum for special education. She said the board should be certain to address those needs, as it has successfully in the past."I would love to come on board and keep that going in the right direction," she said.

Candidate John Conrad agreed that schools are underfunded by the state, which puts a burden on local taxpayers.Adding to the problem, he said, is that the district is facing limited revenue through tax increases while sustaining costs beyond that of inflation for staff health insurance and the state mandates.The district has taken positive steps to curb rising health care costs by becoming self-insured, he said, and by looking into other options before that."Butler is doing a great job, but it will be difficult to maintain that job because of increasing costs," Conrad said.Conrad supported assessment testing, saying that it can be a useful tool for schools to evaluate their current performance.

When asked by the Democratic Party of Butler County to run in Kingman's place, Len Schoettker agreed because "Penny (Kingman) is one of the few people on the school board now whose attitudes mirror mine," he said.Of primary concern to Schoettker is the idea that Republican members and candidates for the board may make the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution an issue, and he would like to curb that.He believes the emphasis on assessment testing doesn't lead to better learning and that rising salary and health care costs are an issue.He is opposed to cutting academic programs in the face of funding shortages. "The purpose of the school district anywhere is to educate children," he said. "If we need to cut costs to balance the budget, let's start with athletics."He said he would cut funding for football before cutting it for an academic activity such as a speech and debate club.