The Revere Local Schools has gained a new member of the Board of Education with a fresh mindset and new goals following a recent resignation.

Courtney Stein was appointed to the Board on March 13, 2023, and attended her first meeting a week after. Stein is replacing former Board member Mike Kahoe, who left after receiving an offer for a position in the Governor’s Office in Columbus. 

The Board itself is mainly in charge of establishing policy in addition to other duties, such as hiring the superintendent and the treasurer for the district. The president of the Board, Keith Malick, has held his current position since the general election of November 2021.

“The members of the Board of Education are highly determined to ensure our students achieve their ultimate success, whatever that may be,” Malick said.

The Board has high expectations for applicants for any position in order to secure excellence in the district in all its endeavors. 

“You want to ensure that they have the same ideals and principles that the community here … is looking for,” Malick said.

He and the rest of the Board of Education have found that in Stein, hiring her for their newest open position.

Stein started her journey to the Bath/Richfield area after earning her degree in Elementary Education and teaching at Stow-Munroe Falls City Schools. When her oldest child Meredith (a 2022 graduate) arrived, she quit her job and started teaching at home rather than for a district. 

Since then, she has been very involved in the lives of her children and their classmates, becoming president of the PTA at Hillcrest and Bath Elementary School and Revere Middle School. She is still an active member of the Parent Teacher Student Organization at the high school level, now that her youngest daughter is a sophomore. 

One of her biggest accomplishments in the district is the founding of the Revere Foundation, where she worked with fellow Revere parent Jason DiLauro to get it off the ground.

“Where it started was mostly a safety initiative … we can come alongside the district with private funds to assist in any way that we can,” Stein said. 

The Foundation was a near-direct result of the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, inspiring the parents to protect the children of Revere in any way possible.

“‘See Something Say Something’ is really our program. We also are the ones who we fundraise, and the district generously donated and allowed us to add additional police officers for arrival and dismissal time,” Stein said. 

However, her work with the foundation didn’t end there. Up until she became a member of the Board, she was also the chairperson of their biggest fundraiser, Illuminate, for the last seven years. 

After all of that work, she decided to make an impact on an even bigger scale, submitting her application for the temporary position on the Board of Education. Her youngest daughter, Avery Stein, is a sophomore this year at Revere, involved in sports and clubs alike.

“[The Board is] something she’s been talking about for a while, and people have been telling her she should do it, and then finally when Mike Kahoe left … [someone] said you should just go for the position,” Avery said. 

Stein is still getting her bearings and working to get involved, but nonetheless, she hopes to help make the lives of Revere students easier and more bearable with her new title. 

“The reason I want to be on the board is just [so] I can help all of the kids at Revere. I went into education because I care about kids; I care about our future. That’s why I was a teacher, and even though I’m not a teacher anymore, I still believe that wholeheartedly,” Stein said. 

More than anything, she works to protect the mental health of her kids and their classmates, making it her number one priority with projects like the introduction of the Hope Meadows program, which matched struggling kids with horses to work and ride with.

“I just want all the kids to have such a good experience here. I think school is so important but so is life. I worry about mental health,” Stein said.

Stein plans to run for a permanent Board member position in the November 2023 general election.