The Lakers School District’s Board of Education covered meaningful ground at its most recent meeting, working through budget approvals, calendar adoption, and a recognition that reminded everyone in the room why strong parent involvement matters so much to a school community.
The meeting opened with a presentation from Huron County Intermediate School District Superintendent Joe Candela, who walked the board through the ISD’s proposed 2026-2027 budget. Lakers Superintendent Jill VerBurg explained the context for why that presentation happens every year — Michigan’s School Code and current legislation require the ISD to present its proposed budget to the schools in its district for review and discussion before it can be formally adopted. The budget had been included in the board’s packet ahead of the meeting, giving members the opportunity to review it before Candela’s presentation rather than encountering the numbers for the first time in the room.
After reviewing the proposal and hearing from Candela, the board approved the ISD budget by resolution — fulfilling the legal requirement and moving the ISD’s financial planning forward for the coming school year.
What the ISD Budget Approval Means
The Huron County Intermediate School District serves as the regional educational agency connecting the individual school districts within Huron County. It coordinates services, programming, and resources that individual districts could not efficiently or affordably provide on their own — special education services, career and technical education coordination, professional development, and administrative support among them.
When a local board of education reviews and approves the ISD’s proposed budget, it is not simply rubber-stamping a document from a higher administrative body. It is fulfilling a legally mandated oversight role that gives local school boards — and by extension the communities they represent — a formal opportunity to examine how regional educational resources are being allocated and to raise questions or concerns before the budget is locked in.
The Lakers board’s approval indicates that the proposed ISD budget met the board’s review standards and that Superintendent Candela’s presentation addressed the board’s questions adequately. That kind of collaborative and transparent budget process is how regional educational governance is supposed to work, and the Lakers board’s engagement with it reflects the kind of institutional seriousness that good school governance requires.
The 2026-2027 School Calendar Adopted
The board also approved the proposed countywide calendar for the 2026-2027 school year. The calendar follows the established pattern of starting in late August and running through early June — a schedule that Michigan families across the county can plan around as they think about summer activities, vacations, and childcare arrangements for the coming year.
The calendar includes a few days built in specifically for professional development, reflecting the ongoing investment in teacher preparation and skill development that modern education requires. Professional development days are sometimes viewed skeptically by parents who see them primarily as school closures that disrupt family schedules. In reality, well-designed professional development — focused on instructional practice, assessment strategies, and student support — directly benefits the students in those teachers’ classrooms. Building those days into the calendar is a commitment to continuous improvement that shows up in classroom quality over time.
The calendar also includes several long weekends for students, which reflects a thoughtful approach to student wellbeing and the natural rhythms of a school year. Spacing out breaks helps manage the fatigue that accumulates during long uninterrupted stretches of the academic calendar, and research on student attention and engagement consistently supports the value of periodic breaks in maintaining the focus and motivation that learning requires.
Recognizing Krista Comal
The warmest moment of the meeting came when the board took time to formally recognize Krista Comal, President of the Parent Teacher Organization, for everything she contributes beyond what the role technically requires.
The recognition specifically highlighted Comal’s work organizing special events designed to keep students and parents engaged and feeling supported. That phrase — keeping people engaged and feeling supported — captures something that is easy to understate and difficult to replace. PTO presidents who do their jobs well are not simply event planners or fundraisers. They are community builders. They are the people who ensure that a school feels like a place where families belong, where their presence is welcomed and valued, and where the connections between home and school are actively cultivated rather than left to form on their own.
Special events that bring students and families together create memories that outlast the academic content of any single school year. A well-run fall festival, a holiday event, a spring gathering — these are the touchpoints that make a school community feel like exactly that: a community. Parents who feel welcomed at their child’s school are more engaged in their child’s education. Students who see their parents involved at school are more motivated and more connected to the learning environment. The ripple effects of that engagement show up in attendance, academic performance, and the overall culture of a school building.
Comal’s work in making those events happen — planning them, organizing volunteers, managing the details that turn an idea into a reality — is the kind of contribution that schools depend on and do not always recognize loudly enough. The Lakers board’s formal acknowledgment at a public meeting is a meaningful way to say that her efforts have been seen and are genuinely valued by the people responsible for overseeing the district.
For a school community that recently celebrated its own Homecoming royalty — Laker High School crowned its Homecoming Prince and Princess in February — the board’s recognition of Comal fits naturally into a pattern of a district that takes the time to celebrate the people and moments that give school life its meaning beyond academics.
The broader conversation about school performance, funding, and community investment continues across the Thumb region. As the Bad Axe Public Schools superintendent evaluation demonstrated earlier this year, stable and committed leadership at the top of a school district creates the conditions under which everything else — including engaged PTOs, meaningful school events, and well-managed budget processes — can thrive. The Lakers board’s productive meeting is another example of a district operating with purpose and community at the center of its work.
For parents and community members who want to stay informed about the Huron County Intermediate School District’s programs and how the ISD budget supports services across the county’s schools, the Huron County ISD provides information on its programs, services, and administrative functions. And for those interested in how Michigan’s School Code governs the ISD budget review process and what legal requirements apply to local board approvals, the Michigan Department of Education maintains accessible resources on school finance law and district governance obligations.
