Straight answers on the issues that matter most — our campaign, our community, and the challenges facing ISD 831.
We want to be upfront about something: we recognize the irony of running as a slate when part of what we've been pushing back against is a self-proclaimed voting bloc on the current board. We see that tension. But the situation that created it is worth understanding.
Over the past year, ISD 831's board has experienced repeated deadlocks, meetings that ran until 2 a.m., and a pattern of political agendas advanced through aggressive manipulation of board procedures — rewriting rules, engineering process traps, and derailing legitimate governance work. None of that serves our district. It wastes resources and erodes public trust.
The community noticed. So many residents spoke during public comment on topics of concern that ISD 831 made statewide news. Community members wrote to the newspaper, to the board, and to state officials. Students staged walkouts to protest policies that directly affect them — because they can't vote. And two individuals, Andi Courneya and Claire Luger, decided to run for school board because they could no longer watch the erosion of transparency, the creep of partisanship, and the steady removal of protections and opportunities for kids.
Jill Christenson, Andi Courneya, and Claire Luger are three neighbors who arrived at the same conclusion independently: this board needs collaborative, community-grounded governance — not political agendas, not ideological tests, not dysfunction. When we found each other, it was clear that running together wasn't just practical. It was the right message.
Jill has been the lone voice on the board trying to hold that line. She doesn't want to keep doing it alone. In a world where big money and national politics are actively working their way into local school governance, running together is how we get elected — so we can restore balance and return this board to its real purpose.
That said: we are not a bloc. We are three different people who will each make our own decisions based on the facts and what we believe is right. We won't always vote the same way. We're not asking you to take our word for it — we're asking you to research each of us individually. On Election Day, we hope you'll find that although we are three different people, we independently share the same goal: stronger schools that serve every kid.
In a school board election, voters can cast up to three votes. We're asking you to use all three.
In early 2025, proposed revisions to ISD 831's student activity Policy 515 included language that would have effectively removed the district's longstanding explicit ban on hate symbols — including the Confederate flag, swastikas, and KKK imagery — from student clothing and apparel.
The proposal triggered an immediate and justified community response. Students staged a walkout at Forest Lake Area High School in May 2025. Board meetings overflowed. The story drew regional media coverage from the Star Tribune, KSTP, and others.
We were involved before it became a headline. Andi Courneya, serving on ISD 831's Policy Advisory Committee, worked to keep the explicit ban intact and prevent the revised language from advancing to a board vote for removal. The reasoning was straightforward: removing named prohibitions doesn't make the policy "neutral" — it makes it toothless.
A point worth naming directly: a Forest Lake Area High School administrator noted that regardless of policy language, any student wearing such symbols would be sent home for causing disruption. We respect that commitment. But the disruption would have already occurred — a swastika walking through a school hallway doesn't wait for an administrator's intervention. It lands on every student who sees it first. That's a 1-to-many harm, not a 1-to-policy enforcement question. Policy exists precisely to prevent that moment from happening at all.
The explicit ban was preserved. We'll make sure it stays that way.
It means we take the long view.
A healthy kid doesn't happen by accident. It happens when a school removes the friction between a student and their potential — when they feel safe, when their learning is protected, when new opportunities come with low or no barriers to entry, when their dignity is respected, and when collaboration feels empowering rather than like an assignment handed to them.
When those conditions exist, students don't just graduate — they grow. Healthy kids become healthy adults. Healthy adults contribute to a thriving community. That's the chain. That's what the ">>" means — it's a direction, not a slogan.
The board's job is to govern in a way that protects those conditions. Every policy decision, every budget line, every hire, every procedure either clears a path for students or puts something in their way. We intend to ask that question at every turn: does this serve the student coming out the other side?
We'll be adding more to this answer as we listen and learn from the community. If you have thoughts on what a healthy school means to you — we want to hear them.
The school board sits at the interface between taxpayers and the school system. That's not a passive position. It requires active, informed oversight — not rubber-stamping administration recommendations and not reflexive opposition either. We call it trust but verify.
In practice, that means board members who read the details, ask the hard questions, and surface risks before they become problems — not after.
Claire Luger demonstrated exactly that in March 2025, when she publicly flagged that ISD 831's Acceleration and Innovation Plan carried an $846,000 risk to MDE funding before the board voted on it. That's the kind of vertical literacy this board needs more of — understanding how a high-level policy decision ripples all the way down to a budget line, a classroom, and ultimately a student.
Fiscal responsibility isn't about cutting for its own sake. It's about ensuring every dollar serves students and earns the public's confidence. Transparency isn't a courtesy — it's a condition of trust.
When board member Luke Hagglund resigned in October 2025, what should have been a routine appointment process became a months-long demonstration of exactly what happens when a board is more divided than it is functional.
The six-member board split 3-3 on multiple votes across a nearly eight-hour meeting. The meeting ran until 2 a.m. and ended without an appointment.
The consequences weren't just procedural. Because the vacancy appointment had been designated a "special order of business," the board failed to pay bills, certify the levy, and accept the 2024-2025 financial audit. Routine district business was held hostage to a deadlock that didn't have to happen.
Jill Christenson, our teammate and the sitting board member who was in that room, said it plainly at the follow-up meeting: "What transpired last Thursday until two in the morning was extremely difficult. That meeting was incredibly difficult, unnecessary, and a lot of trust has been broken."
That's not spin. That's a board member on record, calling out her own institution when it failed the community. The vacancy saga has continued through multiple rounds of candidates — and remains unresolved to this day. The seat that should have been filled months ago still sits empty.
We're running because this board needs members who treat governance as a responsibility — to students and taxpayers, not as a venue for political entrenchment. When the board can't pay its bills because it can't agree on a colleague, something has gone wrong. We intend to be part of fixing it.
We're neighbors, not politicians. Reach out directly — we're accessible, we're listening, and we'll give you a straight answer.
Contact the Team Back to Main Site