Interviews set for Spokane school board candidates

Anyone who’s paid attention to Spokane politics in recent years will find familiar names among the six finalists for a Spokane school board position.

They include a one-time candidate for county commissioner, a former candidate for the Spokane City Council and an activist who’s been involved in various issues. Five of the six have graduate degrees, and all have children.

The candidates will be interviewed this week and next during meetings that are open to the public. Four candidates will be interviewed starting at 4:30 p.m. today at the Spokane Public Schools administrative office, 200 N. Bernard St. Two others will be interviewed Tuesday, starting at 5:30 p.m.

The board has announced that it will go into executive session following Tuesday’s interviews, then will reconvene the public meeting to select a replacement for former board member Christie Querna.

The new director will serve until November 2009 and can then run for election to the post.

Here’s a look at the six finalists:

•Jeffrey Bierman, a physics professor at Gonzaga University who applied for the City Council seat vacated when Mary Verner was elected mayor. He ran unsuccessfully for an open council seat in 2005.

Bierman was among the six finalists in January 2007, when the school board filled a vacant position. Also last year, he entered the campaign for a school board seat, but withdrew his name before the ballot was printed.

A Spokane resident since 1996, he lives in the East Central neighborhood.

Bierman, 40, is married and has three children in Spokane schools.

•Louise Chadez, a member of the West Central Neighborhood Council who has worked on a variety of volunteer boards and commissions. Chadez is a longtime social worker in Spokane who currently works on contract with Spokane County Juvenile Probation and Spokane Addictions Recovery Center. She has taught at the Eastern Washington University School of Social Work.

Chadez ran unsuccessfully against incumbent county Commissioner Phil Harris in the 2002 election. She also was an applicant for an open seat on the Spokane City Council in 2006, when Councilman Joe Shogan was appointed council president.

Chadez, 53, has two children who were valedictorians at North Central High School.

•Katie DeBill, a former educator whose background includes teaching biology. Most recently, she was assistant principal and athletic adviser at Western Washington’s Hoquiam Middle School.

DeBill, 32, graduated from North Central High School in 1994 and is a South Hill resident. She switched careers in 2005 to become a Realtor. She is married and has children.

•Paul Lindholdt, an English professor at Eastern Washington University who edits books and is a writer. He is active in the Get Lit! literary program, is an environmental activist, and works on various community, environmental and academic groups.

Lindholdt, 54, has a long list of published works. A South Hill resident, he is married and has two children in Spokane schools.

•Heidi Olson, a South Hill resident and mother of eight who was an elementary school teacher in Utah in the 1970s.

Olson, 61, has taught at Spokane’s Institute of Extended Learning and lectured at EWU’s English Language Institute, where she worked with immigrants.

•Deana Brower, who taught in public schools for 12 years in California and Missouri, including four years at a charter school for the arts.

Brower, 39, is a South Hill resident with two children in Spokane schools. She is the Parent/Teacher Group president and volunteer coordinator at Jefferson Elementary School.