Brockhoff appointed to fill vacancy on Covington school board until an election in November

By Greg Paeth
NKyTribune Senior Reporter

Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday has appointed Wallace Woods resident April Frese Brockhoff to the Covington Independent Schools Board of Education.

Holliday told Brockhoff that she will have to step down as a parent representative on the Holmes High School site-based council before she can be sworn in to fill the seat created by the resignation last November of board member Kerry Holleran.

The appointment runs through the end of this year. Brockhoff would have to run for election in November if she hopes to serve in 2016, which is the fourth and final year of Holleran’s term, according to the letter from Holliday.

Brockhoff could not be reached for comment this morning.

The letter also said that as a new school board member Brockhoff is required to undergo 12 hours of training through the Kentucky School Boards Association.

Holliday informed Covington schools superintendent Alvin Garrison about the appointment in a separate letter. The other four members of the school board are Jerry Avery, Joyce Baker, Glenda Huff and Julie Geisen Scheper.

Brockhoff has four children in the Covington schools. She majored in biology at the University of Cincinnati and needs to complete a couple of classes to receive her degree, she said in an earlier interview.

Brockhoff was selected from a field of four candidates that included former board member Krista Powers, who served one term and opted not to seek re-election in 2012; Diane Brumback, who ran for the board unsuccessfully last November, and Todd Duesing.

Duesing is a Holmes High School graduate who studied at Northern Kentucky University, where he received his degree in 2001. He has worked as the director of operations for the Aronoff Center for the Arts in downtown Cincinnati since August of 2007.

The four candidates were interviewed by John Thompson, a department of education employee who Holliday’s designee for board member appointments; Jean Crowley, a former Danville Independent school board member, and Joe Brown, a member of the Garrard County school board, according to Nancy Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the education department.

Crowley and Brown are volunteers who were asked to help with the interviewing process and “have no connection to applicants or the district in question,” Rodriguez said.

The three-person panel was entrusted with conducting the interviews and then making a recommendation to Holliday.

The next school board meeting is scheduled for Feb. 9.

Holleran, an attorney who had been elected in 2012, announced last fall that she was resigning from the school board because she was moving to Frankfort, where she had been working as a staff attorney in the Cabinet for Justice and Public Safety. At the time of her resignation, Holleran told the River City News that she finally decided that she could not live in Covington and commute daily to Frankfort.

She had been one of the leaders of the Westside Action Coalition, the neighborhood organization that represents residents of an area that’s bounded roughly by Russell Street on the east, I-71/75 on the west, Pike Street on the north and 15th Street on the south. She also had been active in Democratic politics.