McFarland Named President of District School Board
MIDLAND, Mich. — Scott McFarland was recently named the new president of the Midland Public Schools Board of Education. He’s been a resident of Midland since moving here from metro Detroit in 2011. His wife of 13 years, Dr. Karla Witzke, is a urologist at MidMichigan Medical Center, and they have four children ages 11, 9, 7 and 6. Three of them attend Siebert Elementary and their oldest son is a sixth grader at Jefferson Middle School.
“I have had the absolute pleasure of serving this community as a member of the Board of Education for nearly eight years,” Mr. McFarland told the City Paper. “During that time I have served on numerous committees and have held positions as board secretary, vice-president and now president. I also serve on other community boards including the ACT 345 Retirement Board for the Sheriff’s Office, Rural Community Health Worker Network (RCHWN), The Big Give and Murphy’s Meals. I also volunteer in our children’s schools and serve as a reserve deputy for the Midland County Sheriff’s Office. I have also been a licensed attorney for 16 years.”
“Outside of board work and volunteering, I really enjoy spending time with my family. Seems like a vanilla answer, but my wife has an extraordinarily busy urology practice which oftentimes leaves me to handle after school activities with the kids, household chores and our other business affairs. Down-time with my family is a premium for me and I appreciate every minute of it,” he said.
“My plans for the future are simple. I will continue to love and support my wife and children in their various activities and I will continue to serve this community in any way I can,” said Mr. McFarland. “One of the ways I will do this is to run for re-election to the Board of Education in the 2020 election. If the voters are willing, I will be honored and humbled to continue serving on this board.”
“Our job as board members is to create and approve policies that govern the way Midland Public Schools is run. We seek to empower our educators and enable our administrators to deliver the absolute best education possible to our children,” said Mr. McFarland. “Another function of the board is to hire a superintendent to manage the day to day operations of the district. Board members do not oversee any day to day operations of the district. The Superintendent and his administrative cabinet fill that role.”
Mr. McFarland said that some of the goals as a district include closing the achievement gap, finding ways to elevate lower performing students and giving them the educational resources to succeed now and in the future. “We would like to innovate new and useful ways to enhance communication with parents and students. Some examples include the MPS website, MPS Connect, the weekly Communique and access to the Michigan Parent Dashboard for School Transparency.”
“This year our district also initiated an MPS kindness campaign and an extensive diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. These programs and many, many others can be easily found on the MPS website,” he said.
Some of the challenges our district faces, like many other districts, are financial in nature he explained.
“It takes money to run a school district. We as a district are subject to things like enrollment, state and federal funding and facility maintenance and improvement. We rely heavily on funding from the state and when the legislators can’t get a school aid budget out on time, it really causes chaos in terms of our internal budgeting.”
“Fortunately, we as a district have been very blessed by the overwhelming generosity of our community foundations, parents, teachers, PTO’s,” he said. “We successfully passed a bond and our administrative team has done an outstanding job getting things done on time and substantially under budget. There is no doubt a rainy day is coming, but when it gets here, I think we’ll be ready for it.”
Another one of the things he says he loves about Midland is the absolute value it places on education.
“As the board president, I think it’s important that our community members know that every decision I make is made to put kids first. Period. At the end of the day, I am very comfortable knowing that MPS and its outstanding teachers, staff and administrators have done everything possible to make the educational experience of our children the best it can possibly be. It took a long time and a lot of sacrifice to get here but now, as a district, we’re in a very strong position financially and academically.”
A.J. Hoffman reports on local business and the arts for the City Paper. He also serves on the City Paper’s board of directors.