[5/5/04]A member and former president of the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees is leaving her post, but not sure exactly when she’ll resign.

“I have loved serving District 5,” said Kay Aasand. “To me, this is one of the most important things you can do, and I’d do it all over again.”

Aasand, who was elected to a six-year term in 1998, said she will leave the five-member board because her husband, Kenneth Aasand, is beginning a new job at the Mississippi Air National Guard in Jackson.

Kenneth Aasand, who is in radiation protection services at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, will start the new job May 17.

Kay Aasand said her husband will commute until their house on South Park Drive sells, and she wants to allow her two children to finish the school year before moving to Jackson.

Aasand served a year as president of the board of trustees before being elected secretary in March. District 4 Trustee Jan Daigre is president of the board which hires a superintendent and sets operational policies for the 9,200-student consolidated district. Trustees receive only a token payment for attending meetings.

“Mrs. Aasand has been a very dedicated board member, serving in various capacities on the board,” Superintendent James Price said. “We will certainly miss her, and we wish her well when she makes the move to Jackson.”

Aasand said she has mixed feelings about the move because Vicksburg has been her home for nearly 20 years.

“This is where I met my husband,” she said. “My kids were born here.”

Aasand, who hails originally from Crawford, Miss., moved to Vicksburg in July 1984 to take a teaching position at Halls Ferry Elementary School.

After teaching and working as assistant principal at Vicksburg Middle School, Culkin Elementary and Grove Street Magnet, Aasand quit her job to rear her family.

Kent Aasand, 13, is a seventh-grader at Vicksburg Junior High School, and Dallas Aasand, 11, is a fifth-grader at Vicksburg Intermediate.

In addition to serving on the board, which meets monthly, Aasand teaches 3-year-olds at Hawkins United Methodist Preschool. She’s taught there for eight years and told them she won’t return for the coming school year.

Though she’ll miss Vicksburg and the constituents she’s served, the 45-year-old said she believes that elected boards need “new blood.”

“Boards need new people with new ideas so it doesn’t get stagnant,” she said.

Aasand was up for re-election in November, but she said she was not planning to run for another term.

Under district bylaws, a new trustee who lives in the same district must be appointed by the remaining board members within 30 days of Aasand’s resignation.

Price said he and board members would probably discuss how to seek viable candidates for the position at next week’s meeting.

Aasand’s replacement will serve until January, when the winner of the November election is sworn into office. There will also be an election for District 1 trustee in November. The incumbent is Chad Barrett. Trustees serve six-year terms and district lines are the same as those for supervisor and election commissioner. Terms were staggered when the district was created in 1987 to prevent an all-new board from being elected at any time.

The board meets again at 5:30 p.m. May 13 at Vicksburg High School.