Minnesota and North Dakota Voter's Guide

Forum Communications Co., in collaboration with the League of Women Voters of Minnesota and of North Dakota, is providing this voter guide to help keep you informed ahead of the 2024 election.

  • Learn where candidates running for office in your community stand on the issues.
  • Build your ballot before voting. Print or email the information to use as a reference when you actually vote.

We do not save your information; it will be lost when you leave this page. Only candidates that appear on your ballot will be listed. Additional information may be available for your area so be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for other voters’ guides.

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Voter Guide

ISD #12 School Board Member {_getChooseLabel(this.selections.length)}

School board members oversee the care, management, and control of schools. This includes hiring, firing, and overseeing superintendents, who manage the day-to-day affairs of the district. They also set levies to fund the district and create school policies.Learn more here: https://www.lwv.org/blog/voting-local-matters-why-vote-school-board

Click a candidate icon to find more information about the candidate. To compare two candidates, click the "compare" button. To start over, click a candidate icon.

  • Candidate picture

    Laura Gannon
    (NP)

  • Candidate picture

    Heidi Hansen
    (NP)

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    Craig Johnson
    (NP)

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    Sue Linser
    (NP)

Biographical Information

Why are you the best candidate for this position? (750 characters)

If elected, what will your top three priorities be and why? (500 characters)

If forced to cut the budget in the face of declining revenues, what would be your strategy? (500 characters)

How would you address any racial and economic disparities in our education system? (500 characters)

Please describe how you will engage teachers and families in your decision making process. (500 characters)

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Campaign Website http://www.lauragannon4isd12.com
Contact Phone 4089315724
Facebook (Full URL) http://www.facebook.com/LauraGannon4ISD12
Campaign Email lauragannon4isd12@gmail.com
I was an active officer of the PTA at my daughter’s Elementary School in CA and served as the PTA President our last year there. I have done community organizing work with Take Action Minnesota, that has taught me how to have relationship building dialog with people of different perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds. Being an Engineer has also taught me to think out of the box and come up with creative solutions to complicated problems collaboratively as a team. I have led diverse teams, managed estimates and budgets for Engineering projects for the past 12 years. I think all of this experience will be rich with value to bring our School District up to pace with our rapidly changing community and build bridges within the community.
Safety, Equity, and Honesty in Education are my priorities. When everyone knows they belong and that the environment they learn and work in is supportive of them, the environment becomes a safer one. Individuals have differing needs for learning and growing and they need to be honored in order to create equity in our schools. Honesty in education means trusting our educators to provide an age appropriate curriculum that tackles increasingly complex issues as our children are ready for them.
As a person who makes decisions based on available data, I would ask for a granular breakdown of the budget by programs and services and I would want to see data from an audit of those programs and services. I would look at what was failing and see if it could be fixed, replaced with something better, or if it would be better to discontinue it if it was not needed anymore. I would look for areas where we may have overlap in our programs and services that could be eliminated.
I would champion racial bias training for teachers, staff, and administrators. In writing and reviewing policies for attendance and discipline, I would oppose policies that further disadvantage students of color and students who are already disadvantaged economically and recommend changes that could help close the gap. If redistricting were to come up, I would support redistricting where we are including areas that have economic disparities or areas where a racially diverse population exists.
I would utilize our listening sessions as well as feedback from our strategic planning team that they have gathered from parents in our schools. I would elicit feedback from teachers on policy decisions to ensure we are doing what’s right for our kids and them. I plan to listen to the union reps when they have concerns and work with them to come up with solutions. I would push to have listening sessions offered at later times for our working parents.
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Powered by League of Women Voters Education Fund

The League of Women Voters of Minnesota and North Dakota crafted the questions sent to the candidates in the Spring of 2024. They reached out to candidates based on contact information in their public candidate filings. Candidates with email addresses were invited and reminded with emails. Candidates with only mailing addresses were sent a letter. Candidates with phone numbers received a phone call as well.

Candidate responses are published as they responded and have not been edited, except when responses were longer than the given character limit. In those cases, the responses are truncated.

VOTE411 is brought to you by the League of Women Voters Education Fund and League of Women Voters of Minnesota Education Fund. The League of Women Voters does not support or oppose any political party or candidate for office.