K-M Board to sport youth

Afew years ago, Kasson native Zachay Peterson graduated from K-M High School.

Now after winning an election bid for the K-M School Board last week, he will help lead the school district as a newly elected member of the board.

While Peterson was ultimately able to pull out a third place victory, with three open seats, watching the elections results was nerve racking.

For most of the night, he watched the results putting him in fourth place. When the final precinct results came in, he found himself in third place.

This was a relief for the young newly elected board member.

“You always think that you didn’t put in enough effort to win, but then win you win it feels great,” Peterson said.

After the election, he was overcome with excitement. “It was exciting finding out I won,” he said.

After being elected Peterson along with INSERT

Torkelson received emails from, Superintendent Mark Matuska who explained to them the expectations of being on the school board as well welcoming them onto the school board.

Some of these expectations include attending about

two school board meetings a month depending on the

month as well as being apart of different committees that are assigned to the members by the school board chair.

One of the committees that Peterson hopes to be assigned to is the policy committee.

The main reason why he is hoping to be on this committee is because he

will have the chance to help possibly make some changes to current policy, something he thinks he has an advantage on because of his unique perspective of only graduating from the school a

few years ago.

Another part of being on the school board that he is looking forward to is

helping to provide complete and accurate information to the community about what is going on so that way the community is aware of what is happening.

Even though he isn’t in school anymore, he also explained that he has a passion for learning about how government works, which included him for many years going to local government meetings to see what they are all about.

“I enjoy hearing the different discussions at the meetings,” he said.

One of the things that may be on a lot of people’s minds is whether or not Peterson

is the youngest school board member in the state or in history of Minnesota.

According to the Minnesota School Board Association, the governing body for all school boards across the state, it doesn’t keep track of members’ ages. But MSBA suggests that Peterson may be one of the youngest ones since you are required to be 21 in order to be in office.

Overall, Peterson is looking forward to taking his seat at the school board when he is sworn in during a January meeting and is looking forward to helping with improving the school district he grew up in.