CANDIDATE FILINGS FOR SCHOOL BOARDS LIGHT

With less than two weeks to go before the filing deadline, local school boards have just enough candidates to fill openings in April elections.

The filing period for school board elections in Missouri remains open through Jan. 19. Elections will be held April 6.

Three candidates apiece have filed for the Cape Girardeau and Scott City boards. In Jackson, four candidates have filed.

The Rev. William Bird is the only Cape Girardeau incumbent seeking re-election. The terms of Steve Wright and Bob Blank also expire in April.

In December Wright resigned from the board to accept a position in the school district. Blank is undecided whether he will seek re-election.

Bird, who will complete his first term in April, is pastor of Greater Dimension Church of God in Christ. He and his wife, Rose Mary, have five children.

Also competing for positions on the Cape Girardeau school board are Gary L. McIntyre and Andrew Ostrowski. McIntyre is the store manager at Plaza Tire in Cape Girardeau. He and his wife, Barbara, have a son who attends Alma Schrader Elementary School.

Ostrowski has lived in Cape Girardeau since 1994 and made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in the fall.

Incumbents William Wilthong and Wayne Pettit are seeking re-election to the Scott City Board of Education. Board President Cathy Raines is undecided whether she will seek another term.

Wilthong is completing his first term. He and his wife live in Scott City. Pettit and his wife, Kim, also are Scott City residents.

Kenneth Raney rounds out the list of candidates for the Scott City school board. He is a former school board member and lives in Scott City with his wife, Bonnie.

In Jackson, incumbents Vicky McDowell, Dr. T. Wayne Lewis and Darrell Hanschen have all filed for re-election. Also vying for a seat on the Jackson school board is Mark Baker. He lives with his wife, Mary Kimberly, and three young children in Jackson. He is a journeyman lineman at Ameren UE.

McDowell has served on the board for six years and is a community health nurse and communicable disease coordinator at the Cape Girardeau County Health Department. She and her husband, Harold, have two grown sons.

Lewis, who practices dentistry in Jackson, was first elected in 1987 and has been on the board the longest of any member. He and his wife, Linda, have a blended family of five grown children.

Hanschen, who was first elected in 1990, works at Medicap Pharmacy in Jackson and lives in Fruitland. His wife, Cheryl, teaches at Jackson Middle School. They have three children.