On November 6,  Fred Baldwin, Rick Coplen, Anne Lauritzen, Brian Guillaume, and Deborah Sweaney were reelected to their positions on the CASD school board.  Nearly a month later, on December 7, they met, along with the other members of the board, to reorganize committees and prepare for 2018.

FRED BALDWIN

Fred Baldwin has served for 24 years on the CASD school board, almost all of which were part of four-year terms. However, he ran this year for a two-year position that was created after a member of the board resigned in order to take a job outside of Pennsylvania.

Baldwin currently serves as the Chairperson of the Education Committee, which makes recommendations regarding what is taught in Carlisle area schools. A major part of this, said Baldwin, is reviewing teacher recommendations on textbooks

“In practice, we accept faculty recommendations,” said Baldwin, adding that another responsibility of this committee is to “provide opportunities for faculty and administration to report on educational progress.”

One of Baldwin’s top focuses is to work on getting support for all students, not just those who plan on going into academic professions, and stated that he, along with other members of the board, are proud that Carlisle is one of the only PA districts with an in-house vo-tech program.

“We like it that way because we think it yields a much better integration,” he said.

Baldwin was the only person who ran for the two-year position.

RICK COPLEN

Despite having served on the school board since 2015, the term Rick Coplen has just won will be his first full-length elected term as a member of the Carlisle Area School District’s school board.

In 2015, Coplen was appointed to fill out the remainder of a term served by someone who had left the board. He had been inspired by his mother and her family to apply for the position.

“My mother was a teacher and a school board member and Texas,” said Coplen, adding that his mother was motivated to go to college by her father, who had only a seventh-grade education but “insisted they [his children] went to college.”

Coplen had already been a part of the education sphere for several years when he applied for the position in 2015; from 1992 to 1995 he had taught Social Sciences at West Point. Coplen has also taught economics at the U.S. Army War College since 2010 and is an adjunct professor at Elizabethtown.

Coplen also is an advocate for education outside the classroom. An active member of the Carlisle Rotary Club, he chairs the Rotary Club Veteran’s Fund, which provides money to area colleges in order to provide education for veterans. Coplen is also a member of the Employment Skills Center’s board.

Coplen also provides the experience of a parent of CASD students.  His two daughters Michaela and Jacqueline graduated from CHS in 2011 and 2014, respectively.

On the Carlisle Area School District board, Coplen serves on the Community and Intergovernmental Communication Committee, as well as the Education Committee. He is also the school board’s HACC representative.

BRIAN GUILLAUME

As a senior in high school, Carlisle High School’s Class of 1995 elected him class president. Now, the Carlisle community has voted Brian Guillaume into his second four-year term on the Carlisle Area School District school board.

Guillaume first joined the school board via appointment ten years ago, after a member of the board resigned. Guillaume was approached by a community member who believed he would do well on the school board.

“Somebody approached me when there was a vacancy and thought I would be a good candidate,” he said.

He served out the remainder of that term, then ran for a four-year term the following election. After not receiving that seat, he waited until another board member resigned, and applied for their seat. He received the appointment again and has since retained his seat through two elections, including the most recent one.

Guillaume, who is the father of three current CASD students, serves on the Extracurricular & Athletics and Budget & Finance committees but is also the chairperson of the Property Committee.

“What we do is look forward to renovations and additions to different CASD facilities, not just buildings,” said Guillaume, adding that the committee manages the upkeep of the athletic fields and parking lots used by the district in addition to the buildings.

Outside of his activities with the school board, Guillaume is a construction manager that works with project managers and inspectors across the Commonwealth.

ANNE LAURITZEN

In her activities both inside and outside the school board, Anne Lauritzen is devoted to career development and preparation for students in the Capital Region, and she will continue to harness this devotion in her second term on the CASD school board.

Lauritzen said that she focuses on developing and sustaining career paths for Carlisle students through her position on the school board, as it is something she has “real interest in because that’s what I work in.”

Lauritzen is the Program Coordinator for the Capital Region Partnership for Career Development, a nonprofit that focuses on career paths that start in elementary school and continue through a student’s education.

In addition to building these career paths, Lauritzen has taken a special interest in school-sponsored extracurriculars since she began her first term in 2013. As chairperson of the Extracurricular & Athletics committee, Lauritzen oversees the use and maintenance of CASD’s athletic fields, as well as the maintenance and expansion of extracurricular programs across Carlisle.

So that her committee might have a better understanding of what different student groups do, Lauritzen said that she has started to invite many of Carlisle’s clubs and activities to school board meetings, a practice she wants to continue with groups from every age group and school.

DEBORAH SWEANEY

Throughout her first term as a member of the Carlisle school board, Deborah Sweaney focused on connecting the Carlisle community with its schools, something she plans to continue into her second term, as she believes that “the schools really belong to the community.”

Sweaney, who is the chairperson of the school board’s Community and Intergovernmental Relations committee, interacts with both the Carlisle populace and the state legislature on behalf of the district. The committee connects the people of Carlisle to their schools, and also works to encourage legislators to vote in a way that Sweaney describes as “education-friendly.”

“I enjoy this, I think it’s an important committee,” Sweaney said about the Community and Intergovernmental Relations committee. She also serves on the Education committee.

Outside of her activities with the school board, Sweaney is a historian and genealogist who has written several books on family history. She often works with the Cumberland County Historical Society and has worked as a consultant and judge for the  National History Day program. 

The CASD school board meets on the third Thursday of each month, usually in the Fowler LGI, at 7pm.  Their next meeting will be held on Dec 21.