The Fountain Hills Unified School District (FHUSD) Governing Board will have three seats up for election this November, with six candidates appearing on the ballot. The candidates include Lillian Acker, Jennifer Amstutz-Guerrette, Tara Lamar, Madicyn Reid, incumbent Judy Rutkowski and Libby Settle.

The candidates’ introductions are below. Over the next several weeks, candidates will participate in a Q&A series covering a range of topics concerning the local district.

The School Board election will be part of the Nov. 6 General Election. The voter registration deadline is Oct. 11, with early ballots being mailed out on Oct. 12.

Lillian Acker

Lillian Acker moved to Fountain Hills after she retired from education and has lived here since 2013. She was a teacher for over 25 years in Ohio and Illinois and also earned administration certificates in those states.

Acker earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and Spanish education from Northwestern University in three years, and then went on to get a master’s degree in bilingual education at Loyola University of Chicago.

Acker started her career in Illinois but did most of her teaching in Ohio. Acker spent many years as a union representative in her schools, and she started the Central Ohio ESL Consortium to make English as a second language curriculum uniform in her surrounding districts and schools. She was also the President of Ohio TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages).

Acker raised four children and now has three grandchildren. None of them live in Arizona, but her mom and aunt live in Fountain View Village, and she visits them regularly.

Acker said she lived in the districts she taught in and attended those school board meetings regularly as a teacher. She felt it was important that her family be a part of the local school community, and Acker always wanted to run for school board but couldn’t as a teacher.

Acker said she was motivated to run earlier this year when Proposition 208 was ruled unconstitutional by a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge in March 2022. Prop 208 was approved by Arizona voters in 2020 and was projected to generate over $800 million for Arizona schools in its first full year of implementation.

Based on her experience in other states, Acker doesn’t think public education funding is ever done right from the state level. Acker said she is a big volunteer, and she cares about education and the future generations, and thinks she can offer a lot to Fountain Hills schools.

Jennifer Amstutz-Guerrette

Jennifer Amstutz-Guerrette has lived in Fountain Hills since 1997. She has attended Board meetings for several years and started going regularly and paying closer attention in the last two years. She currently works as a systems engineer consultant for General Dynamics and on satellite communications for Space Force.

Amstutz-Guerrette grew up in Michigan and earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering at Lawrence Technical University. She works full time but is able to spend time focused on her two children and volunteers regularly on school campuses.

Amstutz-Guerrette has one daughter at the high school, and another at the middle school. Her children have participated in school clubs like robotics, band, and cross country, and community programs like Fountain Hills Martial Arts.

Amstutz-Guerrette has volunteered as a Junior Achievement (JA) instructor and served as a judge for an elementary school spelling bee. She was also a judge at Vex Robotic competitions at both the elementary and middle schools and has volunteered to help during fundraisers like the Apex Fun Run.

In the past, Amstutz-Guerrette has served on the School Board’s Gifted and Talented Committee, Calendar Committee, Equity and Equality / Heritage Committee and Override Committee (DAA and M&O). Her husband has served on several site councils.

After Amstutz-Guerrette submitted her paperwork to run for School Board, she enrolled in two Arizona School Board Association (ASBA) school board training classes with Maricopa County School Superintendent Steve Watson. She watched a webinar about serving on a local School Board, and then took a School Board candidate class.

Amstutz-Guerrette believes she can help the district by bringing her engineering perspective to the Board. She said she’s used to rolling up her selves behind the scenes, and during decision making, she tries to view everything objectively and consider every perspective to create solutions.

Tara Lamar

Tara Lamar has lived in Fountain Hills since 1999 and spent over 15 years volunteering for FHUSD in one way or another. She severed as PTO president before and feels the district can use her support again.

Lamar withdrew from San Diego State in her second year to care for her brother with pancreatic cancer. After she moved to Fountain Hills, she continued her education in real estate and earned a real estate license in 2000. She also works as a tour guide and education curriculum specialist at the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center.

Lamar was PTO President from 2013-2018, including one year as sitting past president. She worked

with the district’s director of finance to ensure the PTO was in line with its budget, and Lamar also feels she built strong relationships with staff as president. She believes those relationships are crucial for school and town success, because she views FHUSD as the town’s biggest employer.

Lamar also has connections with other parents and stakeholders in town. She is an auxiliary member of the American Legion and an Athletic Booster Club Board member. She also planned fundraisers and parent nights for Little League groups when her kids were younger.

Lamar has two children at Fountain Hills High School. One is an EVIT student and has run on the cross country team for three years. Lamar’s daughter is on pom team and has danced with KDA since she was three years old.

Lamar has served on several committees for the School Board, including six interview committees. She served on the site council for each school her children attended and currently sits on the high school site council.

Lamar attended School Board meetings regularly as PTO president and started regularly attending again in 2020. Lamar feels that FHUSD has the tools needed to excel with new administrators this year and thinks she will be able to add stability and bring confidence to both staff and parents.

Madicyn Reid

Madicyn Reid has lived in Fountain Hills for four years but has been a part of the local community for longer. She and her family moved to Rio Verde Foothills in 2011, and Reid has attended the Fountain Hills Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since then.

Reid’s younger siblings also went to Fountain Hills High school, and she had two brothers on the football team and a sister in the marching band. Reid attended their games and felt part of the home team even though she did not attend Fountain Hills schools herself.

Reid is a certified professional hair and make-up artist and a self-described hustler. She’s worked several different jobs since she was 15 years old to pursue her passions as a makeup artist and as a mother. Reid doesn’t have a college degree, but she said because of experience in different fields, she understands the importance of her educational foundation which allowed her to pursue a self-made path.

Reid has two young children. One attended McDowell Mountain Elementary School last year, and her youngest will be eligible for kindergarten next year. Reid was an assistant coach in the Fountain Hills soccer little league last year and will be a head coach this year.

Reid pulled her oldest out of the school system last winter and has not reregistered them in the district. She has homeschooled them and said she felt a lack of confidence in policy decisions made at the state level that affected FHUSD. At the time of writing, Reid has been meeting with McDowell Mountain Elementary School Principal Kevin Wilkinson and requested to be on the site council.

Reid began to attend School Board meetings when the COVID-19 pandemic began. She said she felt disconnected with them at first but wanted to bridge that gap because she viewed the School Board as the political office closest with the community.

Reid wants to revitalize the closeknit community atmosphere around FHUSD she experienced with her siblings. She wants to focus on academics, boost overall spirt and make FHUSD a district to be proud of.

Judith Rutkowski

Judith Rutkowski has lived in Fountain Hills since 2001 and has spent two terms and nearly eight years on the School Board. She is a registered nurse and currently works as a substitute school nurse for Scottsdale Unified School District.

Rutkowski spent many years volunteering in FHUSD classrooms and the schools’ health offices when her two children attended Fountain Hills schools. They are now grown adults, but Rutkowski’s dedication to public education is unchanged.

Rutkowski volunteers at several school events, like the end-of-the-year Falcon Fiesta. She studies every page of meeting agendas and Board packets ahead of meetings, and she also reviews every proposed new textbook and material to ensure they are appropriate for students.

Rutkowski will represent FHUSD at the Arizona School Board Association Law Conference this year and has been the Board’s representative several times. She and her husband also present an annual tobacco-use prevention program called Tar Wars to fifth grade students in Fountain Hills and Scottsdale every year since 2005.

Rutkowski is a believer in education and wants all FHUSD students to have an understanding in reading, writing, math, science, history and civics. She believes this education should be supplemented with music, art and athletics.

Rutkowski opposes any effort to silence parental involvement in education and thinks they should be allowed speak their minds about what they want in schools.

Rutkowski believes that all budget items should be carefully reviewed, and the Board should prioritize spending on programs that support students and teachers.

Rutkowski said that she enjoys what she’s doing and the progress she’s helped make at FHUSD. She’s supported policies that advance student success and provide skills to students, and Rutkowski is happy with the current curriculum being taught in FHUSD schools. Rutkowski would consider it a privilege to serve on the Board for a third term.

Libby Settle

Libby Settle has lived in Fountain Hills since 2004. She worked as an elementary school teacher in her home state of Illinois but went to work for an accounting firm for six years and then became a business owner.

Settle currently owns her own accounting firm and is a member of Fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce. She has three biological children and 10 foster children, all of whom are younger than 15. Settle homeschooled all her kids during the COVID-19 pandemic and has put some of them back in the district.

Settle only taught first and fourth grades full-time for two years, but she worked in a small rural district similar in enrollment size to Fountain Hills. She then worked as a substitute teacher for several years in a larger district.

Settle’s kids have been involved in community theater, and Settle has been an assistant soccer coach in little leagues. One of her children is currently in the high school EVIT program, and she said that she has had gifted kids and kids with special needs, so she’s seen both ends at Fountain Hills.

Settle said that she felt Fountain Hills was a dream school district before COVID-19. In conversations with other foster parents, she noticed FHUSD staff was more willing to help walk her through things than other districts, according to other parents.

Settle had paid attention to School Board meetings before but started regularly attending last December. Around that time, she said groups of parents started reaching out to ask why she had pulled her children out of district schools during the pandemic and how they could potentially reconcile issues. She said she loved those conversations within the community about improving the district.

Settle was motivated by those conversations to look up census data and began to wonder why there was only a portion of Fountain Hills children enrolled in FHUSD schools.

Settle wants to make local Fountain Hills schools the school of choice for community parents. Settle said she finds common ground and works with the parents of her foster children, and she’s committed to doing the same for Fountain Hills’ parents.