Wallace School District chooses Hill for board

WALLACE — The Wallace School District chose a familiar face to fill its open Zone 4 trustee seat at February’s Wallace School Board meeting.

Joe Hill is a lifelong patron of the Wallace School District as he graduated from Wallace Jr./Sr. High School and raised his family in the community.

This is Hill’s second term as a school board member, previously serving from 2010-2014. Hill has remained involved in the district, is an active supporter of Wallace athletics, and can regularly be spotted taking action photos during games.

The process of appointing a trustee requires a fair amount of research and guidance for the district. The district referenced school policy, Idaho code, communicated with their legal team, directors at the Idaho School Board Association, and the Idaho State Attorney General before making their decision.

“Through their guidance and feedback the district developed a plan to conduct a panel interview during the open session of our board meeting,” Todd Howard explained. “Our school board stressed that they wanted to ensure that we selected the very best person for the appointment and they wanted to ensure that all interested applicants were considered for the position. We had received three applications and because two of the applicants lived outside Zone 4. We had to wait until 90 days passed from the time of the vacancy posting to even consider anyone living outside Zone 4.”

School board chairperson Anna Berger described the process and explained that she would recuse herself from any discussion, dialogue or voting on the trustee appointment. She instead continued to function as the board chair and ran the meeting, asking the three applicants the questions that had been prepared for the interview.

Following the interview, a motion was made to appoint Hill, and the board voted 3-0 to appoint him to the Zone 4 seat.

After the appointment vote, the board members shared that all three applicants did a fantastic job at the interview. They all agreed that the critical deciding factor in appointing Hill was that he had four previous years of experience with the WSD, countless hours of experience as a parent in the district, and that experience would help the board transition with his new membership.

Explaining his decision to run for the school board, Hill said, “I just wanted to make sure that our school board had someone who was reliable and stable and make the best decisions for the students of Wallace School District.“