La Crosse School Board will feature a write-in candidate. Guess who received the most write-in votes the past few elections

Later this month, the La Crosse School Board is likely going to make a decision on potentially closing two elementary schools.

The school board has been burdened with a lot of responsibility that’s been in the public eye the past couple of years — perhaps beginning with a plan to to consolidate Logan and Central high schools into one, $174-million facility.

When that fell through, the board voted to close Lincoln Middle School — which recently sold to a group intending to turn the building into affordable housing.

So, when papers needed to be filed early last month to run for school board, and only two candidates did so, with three open seats up for grabs, many were left wondering why there weren’t more people running for the board.

That included Superintendent, Dr. Aaron Engel.

“ Yeah, it was a little bit surprising,” Engel told the La Crosse Talk PM audience. “The last two years we’ve had contested elections, and last year we even had a primary — so we had to whittle the candidate field down. So surprising that there’s only two running. I’m thankful that they are people that have put their name in and care enough about public schools.

“The write-in candidate in this election will become a member of the board — as long as they agree to that and meet the appropriate qualifiers.”

---

La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

---

The person who received the most write-in votes the past couple of school board elections would not have qualified.

“ Yeah, we get write in candidates every year,” Engel said. “You know, folks don’t like the choices that are on the ballot and they throw on somebody else’s name.

“If the write-in candidate won, who got the most votes last few years, it’d be Donald Trump. And prior to that, the standard was Mickey Mouse.

Neither Trump nor Mouse (Is Mouse a last name?) live in the district, so they could not become board members. There may also be rules as to whether you need to be human.

La Crosse School Board secretary Laura Steigerwald said another board would determine eligibilty.

“For any potentially fictitious write-ins, like Mickey Mouse, it will be up to the Board of Canvassers to determine if that write-in is a legitimate person who could take office or not,” she said in an email to WIZM.