5 running for Carey Board of Education

By ANDREW WILSON
Staff writer
CAREY — There will be five write-in candidates, including one current board member seeking reelection, on the Nov. 5 ballot for the Carey Exempted Village School District Board of Education.
Greg McCartney
Greg McCartney has already served two terms on the Carey BOE, beginning in May 2011, and is up for reelection.
McCartney works as a chemical engineer in the corporate health environment and safety group at Marathon Petroleum in Findlay. His kids all graduated from Carey High School.
Continuing his contributions to the Carey BOE is the primary reason he is seeking reelection.
“I am seeking reelection because I think I can contribute to the board,” McCartney said. “I feel comfortable on the board. I enjoy doing it and representing the residents and the tax payers of our district.”
Ensuring the community was fully informed about the new Carey School and the levies and seeking their approval for the levies that helped get the new Carey School built is the biggest accomplishment he has helped with in his time as a board member.
His goal for the Carey BOE in upcoming years is to continue to operate the school within the funds provided by the local state and federal funding sources.
“I think it is important to be involved in the community so we can support the school and support activities and make the community a better place to live,” McCartney said.
He feels the expertise he brings to the board includes contract review and negotiations.
Lastly, McCartney said he will do his best to represent the taxpayers and community members of the village of Carey.
“I will do my best to represent the residents and tax payers in the community and provide for the best education for the students,” McCartney said.
Shawn Burgei
Burgei, an Ottawa Glandorf High School graduate and Owens Community College graduate, hasn’t served on a board before, but has served on the Midget Football Committee and is the Kiwanis Club president-elect.
He is no stranger to Carey School.
“I worked at the school for six years, six years as a contractor and as full-time, and then I started full-time back at my business, so not being involved in the school anymore, and then being involved in the school, I feel like I’d be a very good candidate because I’ve been inside and I can see the outside in,” Burgei said.
That experience will be beneficial anytime a technology-related decision needs to be made, Burgei noted.
“With the technology end of things, being a techie and then owning an internet company, I feel like I can help with the technology end of decisions we make at the school and help with that moving forward,” Burgei said. “I worked at the school for those six years, so I’ve seen how it was when I was there, so I could help. I was inside, so I understand, I could help.”
He has children who presently attend the school and has run the scoreboard for basketball games as a volunteer and volunteered for other activities as well.
Michael E. Rickle II
Being a lifelong Carey resident, Rickle has wanted to be more involved in the community and the school and help out in any way possible, and that is why he is running for a spot on the Carey BOE.
“Living in the community — I’ve lived here my whole life — I’m 40 years old and take a lot of pride in our village of Carey and wanting to make sure that the future stays how it is,” Rickle said. “(We have) a good success rate, a lot of good things happening in the village. You come from a small town, and there’s a lot of pride in that.”
Rickle is the electrical project manager at Vaughn Industries. He has four sons currently attending school at Carey School.
He has not previously served on a board.
If elected, Rickle has many goals for the board, including doing whatever they can to improve and maintain everything they already have accomplished. He also noted he thinks the Carey BOE has done an excellent job and, having been a member of a committee before, he believes it takes multiple people to accomplish a task.
He feels it is important to get involved in the community because “to maintain, like I said, what we’ve got here in the village, it takes people to do the work and people willing to step up and to help out, that’s why I want to,” Rickle said. “I’ve always said, ‘If you want to voice your opinion, then you should be willing to work. That’s why I went ahead and casted my name in there for school board is to help out in any way I can.”
For those considering voting for him, Rickle said he is willing to do the work and continue to do the work full term.
Ray Conti
Looking to stay involved in the local school, Conti, a year-long member of the Carey Athletic Boosters, has submitted his name as a write-in candidate for the Carey Board of Education.
Conti is a chore services manager for 50 North in Findlay. Before that, he was a general manager for a scrap yard in Findlay. He has a son that is a sophomore at Carey High School.
“I work in Findlay and I want to try to stay more involved in town, so that’s what I want to do, because most of the time I’m out of the city limits, so (I want to) come back and try to do whatever the school board needs,” Conti said.
Conti was on the adviser board for Our Lady of Consolation School for six years, serving as a president for the last three or four years.
“One of the main things, we were the ears,” Conti said. “If somebody was talking about something or somebody would come to us and ask a question, we could be able to answer it to them or they were having an issue, we could direct them to the proper channels to go through with the school system.
“We talked about different things: building projects, fundraising, what other things we could do to make OLC a better school.”
He also noted when he first started on the OLC board, they often broke into groups, as he was on buildings and grounds while others were on finance and other groups, and they worked on different projects, often enlisting the help of volunteers.
Conti also was a volunteer basketball coach at OLC for four years.
To a spot on the Carey Board of Education, he would be bringing expertise in running businesses and communicating with different contractors as well as communicating with the local community.
Improving school safety would be one of the goals.
“I saw somewhere where somebody asked, ‘What can a school do for school safety?’” Conti said. “I think the school’s already doing a lot of things that need to be done. I would like, somewhere along the line, that the parents also need to be accountable for their children to instruct them if they hear anything, not to sit back, but they need to tell an adult if they think it’s going to be a safety issue, if they think something’s going to happen. A lot of parents don’t want to take accountability for their kid’s actions.”
Conti added if someone came to him and asked him a question he can’t correctly answer, he is going to go back to the school board, seek the right answer and correctly inform them the truth.
Julie Nye
As the daughter of former Carey councilor Larry Dible, Nye said being a member of the Carey Board of Education has been one of her goals. She recently finished her master’s degree and decided this was a good opportunity to run for a spot on the Carey BOE.
She was born and raised in Carey and has lived in Carey for most of her life, with the exception of nine years. She is a nurse practitioner at Bridge Palliative Care.
She has three children — a senior at Carey High School, a sophomore at CHS and an eighth-grade student — who attend Carey School.
“It was a goal as I was growing up,” Nye said. “I’ve been busy the last several years working on my master’s degree and now seemed like a good opportunity. My father served on the city council for a while, so that has always been a goal to serve the community.”
She is hoping to increase female representation on the board.
“We have lack of female representation on the board,” Nye said. “I like to be a voice for the girls, the high school, elementary, staff members. I feel like the school is being run very well right now. I don’t have any concerns with that, I just thought this would b ea great way to get started on the board.
Nye said she would like to be able to give back to the Carey Exempted School District, as it has been good to her. She supports public schools.
“Give me a chance,” Nye said. “I’m a quiet member of the community, but I would like to be able to give back to the school, they have been good to me through my education. I am a full supporter of the public schools.”