The three contenders for the AASA presidency in the next year got a chance to make their case to the voters at Friday morning’s 2nd General Session at the AASA national conference in Nashville.
The three are running for president-elect for a term beginning July 1. The winner assumes the AASA presidency 12 months later.
Electronic voting opened Friday.
The three candidates are Eric C. Eshbach, superintendent, Northern York County School District in Dillsburg, Pa.; Gary L. Kelly, superintendent, DuQuoin Community Unit School District, DuQuoin, Ill.; and Deborah L. Kerr, superintendent, Brown Deer School District, Brown Deer, Wis.
Each had five minutes on the general session stage Friday morning.
Eshbach talked about the association’s role in promoting the underdogs in schools, the children without the advantages of others, and referred to public education as an equalizing factor.
Kelly talked about AASA as a team organization and a service organization that had a particular role to play in buttressing the many superintendents operating in their first three years on the job.
Kerr called herself a product of Title IX, both for the academic and athletic boost she received during her student days and referenced a women’s leadership event in Wisconsin that she helped to organize that involved leaders from education, business and government.
Eshbach, an AASA member since 2003, has been in his current superintendency since 2012. Kelly, an AASA member since 1994, has filled his current post since 1997.
Kerr, an AASA member since 2000, has been in her current berth since 2007.
The trio also spent 45 minutes Friday afternoon for a meet-and-greet session at the AASA Bookstore and staged a Q&A forum later in the afternoon.
The election is being conducted via e-mail with ballots distributed to eligible voting members of association beginning Friday morning. Voting will end at midnight on March 9.