May is School Board Appreciation Month and for one Greene County School Board member, this year alone has been a challenging one.

Board President Dr. Steve Karber is a retired physician and is finishing his first term on the school board. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio he originally ran for school board because the community was considering a bond for a new high school and career academy. He also had inspiration from his father, who also served on a school board. 

When it came to board discussions about COVID-19 mitigation efforts, Dr. Karber reflects on the decisions and how they came to those conclusions.

“I do think we’ve agreed to disagree. We’ve made some decisions that were controversial and probably didn’t make 50-percent of the people happy. But we made them, we moved out and tried to support what the decisions were.”

Dr. Karber takes a broader look of what he thinks society looks like during the global pandemic.

“Our society right now there is a lot of intolerance. Intolerance in the name of patriotism, in the name of individualism, in the name of religion, it’s still intolerance. So don’t make an excuse to be intolerant of people (and) respect people. I think we’ve done that as a board. We’ve tolerated each other. We’ve haven’t necessarily agreed with each other, but we’ve tolerated what the positions were.”

Superintendent Tim Christensen acknowledged School Board Appreciation Month with certificates for each of the five board members at the most recent school board meeting. The other board members include Vice President Catherine Wilson, Mike Dennhardt, John McConnell and Steve Fisher.