With the appointment of Edward Ruffolo, the current Vice President of the Appleton Education Foundation, to the AASD Board of Education it is very easy to start wondering why AEF members are so strongly represented on the Board of Education. Ed Ruffalo is the current AEF Vice President, Gary Janke was the President of AEF back in 2016-2017, and James Bowman, Barry O’Connor, Kay Eggert, and Kristine Sauter are all donors.
The only person that doesn’t clearly have an association with the Appleton Education Foundation is Deb Truyman, the one person who has been most receptive to the concerns of the parents.
Can the public genuinely expect the Board of Education to be able to value the concerns and honestly weigh the needs of all stakeholders (students, parents, staff, and the community at large) when 6 of 7 members all come from one organization with one philosophy?
Jim Bowman, when the interview process was only halfway through, spoke very highly of Mr. Ruffolo and specifically mentioned that he was “intrigued” by his background and liked the fact that he has served on a number of boards “including our own Appleton Education Foundation”.
Jim’s words seemed to make Kay Eggert nervous and she stepped in and stated, “I just want to clarify something that, Jim, I don’t want it to be misconstrued. When you said ‘our own foundation’. The Appleton Education Foundation is a wholly separate organization from the school district. I think you meant it as, it’s a foundation that supports the district, but we don’t actually…I just didn’t want there to be some misconception of, um the…um…the operations of the foundation compared to the district. So, I just want to clarify that.”
Kay may claim the district and the Appleton Education Foundation are two distinct and separate organizations, but Jim Bowman certainly wasn’t the one who drew that distinction. How separate can they really be when 6 out of the 7 Board of Education members also have ties, sometimes obviously quite close ties, to the Appleton Education Foundation?
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