{"id":46612,"date":"2025-02-13T09:31:34","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T13:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/?p=46612"},"modified":"2025-02-13T09:46:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T13:46:30","slug":"stoll-looks-back-on-seven-years-as-school-board-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/top-stories\/2025\/02\/13\/stoll-looks-back-on-seven-years-as-school-board-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Stoll looks back on seven years as School Board President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Upon graduating high school, Tina Stoll never imagined herself as school board president, let alone for her alma mater. Fast-forward 41 years, she is stepping down from her position as president after steering North Penn through unprecedented waters for the past seven years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI am a North Penn grad. Although, when I went to high school here, I did not care for it,\u201d former school board President Tina Stoll said. \u201cI graduated with about 880 in my class, and if you would\u2019ve said to me back then, in 1983, 41 years ago, \u2018You\u2019re going to be school board president someday\u2019 I would\u2019ve laughed. It\u2019s ironic to me that I am school board president.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Stoll, this realization wasn\u2019t overnight. It wasn\u2019t until her children went through the district that she saw all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a smooth-sailing education.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was when my kids went to school here and they were involved in activities, I saw how they got to participate in the school community and that\u2019s what made me join the booster club, and I enjoyed seeing those kinds of things,\u201d Stoll stated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI was president of The 12th Knight Booster Club for seven years, and we kept moving our games to other fields because our field condition in the stadium was not playable. I orginally began going to the school board to ask for the stadium to be upgraded and I got more and more interested so I started attending more meetings,\u201d Stoll explained. \u201cI also joined my local Democratic Party of Montgomery Township and it snowballed from there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her spiked interest motivated Stoll to run for school board, but her success wasn\u2019t immediate, and like all good things, getting elected took time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI ran three times for school board, 2011, 2013, and 2015, and I lost each of them so I wasn\u2019t going to run again. But then there was this group of people that were going to run in 2017 that I got along with really well. Someone else on the board at the time said \u2018Why don\u2019t you just give it one more shot\u2019. So I ran a fourth time and we got on with our whole slate and flipped the board.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many people talk about seeing the world from a different point of view but that phrase became reality for Stoll overnight. For the first time in years, Stoll was on the inside looking out at the seats she once sat in as an audience member for school board meetings. Not only that, but Stoll was running them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<aside>\n    <div class='pullquote sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d sno-animate pullquote-shadow'>\n                <div class=\"quotebody\">\n                        <div class='largequote'>&ldquo;<\/div>\n                                    <p class='pullquotetext'>It was definitely like getting thrown into the deep end because even for all the meetings that I had gone to, it was one thing sitting on the audience side of the table, but it was a whole other thing sitting behind it<\/p>\n                            <p class='quotespeaker'>&mdash; Former North Penn School Board President, Tina Stoll<\/p>\n                        <div class=\"clear\"><\/div>\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<style>\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d {\n    display: flex;\n    float: left;\n    margin: 30px 30px 30px 0;\n    width: 50%;\n    border-color: #67c0fc;\n    border-top-width: 5px;\n    border-right-width: 5px;\n    border-bottom-width: 5px;\n    border-left-width: 5px;\n    background-color: #0a1c42;\n}\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d p.pullquotetext,\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d p.quotespeaker {\n    color: #ffffff !important;\n}\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d .pullquotepic {\n    width: 33%;\n    margin-left: 25px;\n}\n.sno-story-body .sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d p.pullquotetext {\n    font-size: 22px;\n    line-height: 1.4em;\n}\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d .quotebar {\n    background: #0a1c42;\n    flex: 0 0 90px;\n    margin-top: -15px;\n    margin-left: -15px;\n    padding-left: 15px;\n    padding-top: 15px;\n    margin-right: 15px;\n}\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d .largequote {\n\tcolor: #67c0fc;\n}\n.sno-pullquote-6a6050830692d .quotebody {\n    width: unset;\n}\n<\/style>\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBecause I had been the one that was going to the school board meetings the longest and had the most experience is how I got to be president. It was definitely like getting thrown into the deep end because even for all the meetings that I had gone to, it was one thing sitting on the audience side of the table, but it was a whole other thing sitting behind it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking back on the past two terms, Stoll has many fond memories of working on the school board, but most of them have one thing in common. Her team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI like the community [school board] provides. The team that we have has been exemplary and we all get along well. I always give credit to us as a team because every one of us has different lives and personal experiences we bring to the table,\u201d Stoll stated. \u201cFor instance, Mr. Kassa works with school safety and higher education, Dr. Gee is a principal at an elementary school in another district, Mr. Fusco is a special education teacher, Mr. McBain is a high school teacher in another district, Ms. Ramich is a social worker, and Mrs. McMurturie is a retired construction manager. Everybody comes from really different backgrounds, but everything is very relevant to the school and the issues we are having to deal with as school board directors,\u201d she continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When one pictures the duties of a school board president, it usually includes long lists of items waiting to be checked off, but with a team of this caliber, this is not necessarily the case.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAs president, my role has been more ordinary things. I think it&#8217;s the team effort and everybody doing their part that makes us function at such a high level. I enjoy working with our team and the administration has been great too, especially with it being a tough couple of years,\u201d Stoll said. \u201cI think because we are a team and I trust my other team members part, it&#8217;s not as consuming for me [being President] as one might think. Being together now for seven years, [we have] become a well-oiled machine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although the school board had been working together for a while at the time, when COVID-19 hit, they, too, were thrown into a state of uncertainty. Not only were they tasked with making sure their families were safe, but they were also in charge of determining the course of action for the North Penn School District as a whole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBeing on the board during COVID-19 was challenging for everyone, no doubt about it. And it was even harder because we were being put in the position of having to make decisions that truly affected people and their everyday lives. It was really hard to say school was going to be closed and we were going virtual, but it was also really hard to hear people say I have a sick child or \u2018We have grandparents living in our house\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m afraid my child will get sick\u2019,\u201d Stoll explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While dealing with the safety aspect, the board was also tasked with addressing the surplus of outside noise that erupted due to the differing opinions across the country on the controversial topic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOf course, everybody was very opinionated about what we should do and some people were not very happy with our decisions even though we tried our best to follow medical advice and what was being recommended,\u201d Stoll stated. \u201cIt made us get tough skin, if we didn\u2019t have one before that, we definitely did after. It was something having people coming up to the microphone and screaming at you or spitting on the ground. At one point, we had to get escorted in and out of the building with security which was annoying. I feel like that wouldn\u2019t have happened before COVID so it was my job to try to keep everybody\u2019s morale up, and we all knew that we had each other&#8217;s back and were looking out for each other. And as far as social media, we just had to learn not to look at it and tune it out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s unsettling sometimes when you see people make comments about you who don\u2019t know you but on the other hand, we have a lot of supporters so it\u2019s nice to see people write supportive things. People didn&#8217;t see all the people emailing and contacting us behind the scenes, who were thanking us for what we were doing,\u201d Stoll continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At such a difficult time throughout the world, Stoll expressed how helpful it was for the directors to stay unified and continue to trust each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think that was the most difficult part hands down and again, I credit the team because we got through it together. Some neighboring boards are not as unified and I think if that were us, it would have been more difficult going through that. We were very aligned in what we felt we had to do so it made a difficult time more bearable,\u201d Stoll said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unlike many other political positions, being on the school board is completely volunteer. Not only does this mean the directors don\u2019t get paid, but it also means they are living a normal life like everyone else in their community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI always say we are at the local level so people see us at the grocery store, the mall, or a restaurant. We\u2019re not like your senator who you\u2019ll never see because they are in Washington DC or somebody who has security all around them,\u201d Stoll laughed. \u201cYou could run into us anytime, anywhere.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite the difficulties that arose with COVID-19, the former school board president also reflected on the many successes this group of directors had over their time together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think the biggest accomplishments were that we successfully got through COVID-19, we finally started the North Penn High School renovation project, which even though the referendum itself failed, I do feel that the fact we gave the community a chance for their voices to be heard about whether or not the ninth graders get moved up was a big accomplishment,\u201d Stoll recalled. \u201cThe day after the referendum failed, the administration was already working on option two. I think it is a long-overdue project and it is finally going to get started in late spring so that\u2019ll be good.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite there being no term limits for school board positions, Stoll among a few of her colleagues agreed to only serve for a certain amount of time to allow for fresh eyes in the position.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere are no term limits for school board, but when Mr. Fusco, Mr. Kassa, and I first ran, we said that if we were lucky enough to be elected and then reelected, we would only serve two terms,\u201d Stoll stated. \u201cAt this point in our country\u2019s history, I feel like offices should be term-limited. I think many people have been in office for too long and it&#8217;s really hard to break an incumbent as they already have the means to raise the money and have backing. When you are spending all that time raising funds, you are not able to sort out constituents because you are spending so much time trying to reach the next election. So we decided we didn\u2019t want to be that way. Having fresh eyes is always a good thing,\u201d she continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although she still has one year left in her term, Stoll has passed the gavel on to Mrs. Cathay McMurtrie to allow her to adjust while she is still there to help.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMr. Fusco and I decided to step down now because we thought it would be good to help with the transition while we were still here. I know Mrs. McMurturie appreciates that as it allows us to work together so she could ask questions regarding how things are done or when things have to be done by.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking ahead to her final year on the board, Stoll is looking forward to moving the renovation along and helping the transition be seamless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c[In my last year], I hope to get the high school project well underway, which it looks like it will be and I hope to help Mrs. McMurturie transition smoothly into her new role as president. We are also working on getting replacements for Mr. Kassa, Mr. Fusco, and myself for the next election and working to get them elected onto the board so our team can continue the way it has been,\u201d Stoll stated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although it can seem daunting to run for school board, Stoll referred to the importance of keeping public education safe and effective, and the only way to ensure this is if people put themselves out there and run in elections.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are a really big district and it&#8217;s always weird to me how few people step up to run for political office. Yes, it is volunteer, but it is very important. It&#8217;s also very fulfilling when you are working with a great team of administration and you see the things you are doing affecting positive change. For example, putting full-day Kindergarten into place. That was a big deal, \u201c Stoll said. \u201cI think sometimes people are intimidated by putting themselves out there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c[Being a school board member] is a very important job and people depend on us. I think public education has been under attack for the last couple of years, or probably even longer, and we need people to step up and defend it so that it\u2019s here for our grandchildren, and I hope that continues,\u201d Stoll continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although she didn\u2019t enjoy her experience at North Penn, Stoll has a newfound appreciation for the district after having children passed through and working as a school board director.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think my children got an excellent education at North Penn and I\u2019m very grateful for all the things they offered from gifted to special needs and everything in between,\u201d Stoll explained. \u201cAnd with all the extracurriculars, there is something for everyone no matter their interest so I think it\u2019s important to make sure it remains that way for kids moving forward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although Stoll feels it is time for her to step down from the board next year, she also realizes it is bittersweet and there is so much she will miss.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI am going to miss the comradery of our board and the administration and it was truly a pleasure working with them,\u201d Stoll said. \u201cI was disappointed when I lost the first three times, but in the end, it worked out in my favor because I got to work with this amazing group.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c[For anyone that wants to be on the school board], my advice would be to work with a team and make sure everybody\u2019s voices are heard and that their ideas are considered and everybody is working towards the goal of the betterment of public education and making sure that our schools are the best in the state,\u201d Stoll concluded. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Upon graduating high school, Tina Stoll never imagined herself as school board president, let alone for her alma mater. Fast-forward 41 years, she is stepping down from her position as president after steering North Penn through unprecedented waters for the past seven years.\u00a0 \u201cI am a North Penn grad. Although, when I went to high&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,11],"tags":[],"staff_name":[1341],"class_list":["post-46612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-top-stories","staff_name-maddie-cimino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46634,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46612\/revisions\/46634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46612"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightcrier.org\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=46612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}