Janice McDonald, Vice President
Director, District B
Voters chose McDonald to take over the Director B seat on the Cherry Creek School District Board of Education in 2015, but her roots in the community go far deeper than a single election. Since McDonald and her husband moved to the district in 1976, the landscape surrounding their home in the Overland High School feeder area has transformed fundamentally.
“I was able to witness the district evolve into what it is now,” McDonald said. “When I first moved here, we called it ‘Country City’ and we thought of the school district as a rural school district. We used to have farms near Eastridge Elementary.”
Just as the city of Aurora expanded and developed, so did the Cherry Creek School District. McDonald and her family took an active role in the district’s evolution – all five of her children attended Cherry Creek schools, and she took an early active role as a volunteer and an employee. She volunteered at Eastridge and Ponderosa elementary schools; she worked with the I-Team at Smoky Hill High School in the late ‘70s and moved on to a role as a family school community liaison at Prairie Middle School before retiring in 2010. These posts in the district came in addition to McDonald’s extensive work for the city of Aurora, Aurora Mental Health and other community organizations.
McDonald and her fellow board members are dedicated public servants – unpaid volunteers – who work diligently to ensure that the children of Cherry Creek receive the best education possible – one that helps them discover their pathway of purpose and prepares them for success in college, the military, or the workplace.They are responsible for the academic success of more than 53,000 students, as well as the efficient management of a district with nearly 9,000 full and part-time employees and an annual general fund budget of over $670 million. They spend countless hours studying student achievement and school finance, working with lawmakers and educational experts, meeting with district administrators, teachers, staff members, parents, and students, and attending school and district events.
Each board member represents one of the district’s five director districts, but they are elected ‘at-large’ to four-year terms by registered voters via a non-partisan ballot. McDonald represents Director District B, which includes the following schools:
Eastridge Elementary
Highline Elementary
Polton Elementary
Ponderosa Elementary
Sagebrush Elementary
Village East Elementary
Challenge School
Prairie Middle School
Overland High School
Learn more about the Cherry Creek Schools Board of Education here.
Posted 1/17/2023.
