In an effort to continue the district’s commitment to community partnerships, the Keokuk School Board is adding a School Advisory Committee with community volunteers as another communication channel for the public. Community members that are not part of the district’s staff and reside in the Keokuk Community School District that are interested in serving on the committee are encouraged to submit their interest by June 15 to the board.
The board presented the idea for a School Advisory Committee at the regularly scheduled meeting on May 18, 2026, and confirmed the plan at the meeting on June 1. The committee will be a group of community volunteers that are not district staff that will meet monthly. The new committee was created to continue to add layers to the district’s effort to enhance communication that aligns with transparency. The plan for the committee would be for community members that may not feel comfortable addressing the Keokuk Board of Education members on their own or during a public meeting, as well as district administration, etc., to be able to contact designated community members that will then bring the question or concern to the monthly committee meeting, discuss the item, confirm that the concerned community member resides in the district, and the next steps to resolve the concern or open up the item for discussion via the board at the board meeting.
The committee update would be a standing agenda item as part of Committee Reports at the second regularly scheduled monthly board meetings to be used for followup on the item, to ask questions or simply update the board on the items that were discussed and potentially resolved.
The committee would include eight members, including the five community volunteers that reside in the Keokuk Community School District who are not district staff members, Heidi Harness, who is the district’s Director of Finance, for any human resources or financial questions, one Keokuk Board of Education member, Bonnie Peevler, will be the standing board representative on the committee to connect the committee to the board and one additional board member will rotate on and off the committee in two-month increments through the 2026-27 school year. The rotating schedule for the additional board member that will be in addition to Peevler for the committee is:
- June and July: Lacy Ames
- August and September: Kim Wyatt
- October and November: David Barrett
- December and January LeAnn Clifford
- February and March: Clint Wray
- April and May: Laurie Mendenhall
Ideally, the board has requested that the community committee members represent the following areas of the community in the district including at least one local business owner, two to three current district parents/guardians with at least one member interested in athletics and one interested in music, one alum and one former educator. These volunteers may overlap, meaning a parent could be a local business owner as well, etc. The community volunteers on the committee would be given school district email addresses that will be listed on the website so that concerns are officially reported and their personal contact information would not have to be provided. Concerns will have to reported by community members that are confirmed by the committee’s district representative to reside in the district and be 18 and over (voting age) in first person via email only (the district will not review these communications unless there is a safety concern reported by the committee, however the committee could keep the identity of a concerned member of the public or staff member private from the Board as long as it is a first person account).
The board requests that those interested in one of the five community volunteer positions on the committee complete the tasks in the following timeline:
Volunteer interest timeline:
- June 15: Community members that are interested will need to email the Keokuk Board of Education members David Barrett at david.barrett@keokukschools.org, Laurie Mendenhall at laurie.mendenhall@keokukschools.org, and Bonnie Peevler at bonnie.peevler2@keokukschools.org by 6 p.m. on June 15, 2026.
- June 19: Standing board member on the committee, Bonnie Peevler, will email the five confirmed volunteers by noon on Friday, June 19, 2026, and will ask that the volunteers respond to that email to formally accept placement on the committee by 5 p.m. on Monday, June 22, 2026. If a formerly interested volunteer declines or does not respond by the deadline, the next available volunteer on the list will be contacted and so on, if a position is not filled on the committee, then it will remain open and the board will promote it to the public once again. Any interested volunteer that is not confirmed as a committee member will be notified no later than noon on Friday, June 26, 2026.
- July 20 Meeting: All interested volunteers must be available for the planned initial meeting of the School Advisory Committee from 4:15-5:15 p.m. on Monday, July 20, in the event that they are confirmed as committee members via email as members. Only confirmed members will be able to attend.
The new committee will meet from 4:15-5:15 p.m. planned to be located at the Keokuk Public Library to provide a more neutral location prior to the second regularly scheduled Keokuk Board of Education meeting each month with a standing agenda item on that day’s board meeting. However, items that need to be researched or confirmed prior to being brought to the school board meeting will likely need to be discussed at the following month’s board meeting. When there is only one board meeting a month, such as July and December, the committee will still meet prior to that meeting, with the exception of January when the committee will not meet until the regularly scheduled meeting in February.
The Keokuk Board of Education meeting schedule for the 2026-27 school year will be released this summer, but generally falls on the first and third Monday of each month, except for the July, December and January months where there is one meeting and when the meeting would fall on a holiday, which the meeting is then held on the following Tuesday.
