A potentially lively two months on the campaign trail await the eight candidates for Wauwatosa School Board — and voters, as they decide which four should be next to serve on the school district’s governing body.
Even before the candidates filed their nomination papers, the spring election was primed for a race unlike any in recent memory: The April 7 election will mark the transition to a system of results based on the top four vote-getters from the whole pool of candidates, rather than separate head-to-head contests for numbered board seats.
The school board provides governance oversight to the superintendent and district operations, approves the annual budget and sets the district’s policies. The board is made up of seven total board members, who are elected to serve for three-year terms and are not paid.
This year’s eight candidates include three incumbent board members, as well as four challengers who have grouped themselves as a “slate” under the label of a local reform advocacy group known as the 2030 Tosa Task Force. (A “slate” is not officially defined, and voters will cast their ballots for individuals, not any self-identified slate.)
Tosa Forward News contacted and interviewed each of the eight candidates to learn more about their backgrounds and to provide an opportunity to share their reasons for running for the school board. Those interviews were condensed for the following summaries, which are ordered alphabetically by last name.
Heather Birk
Personal: Birk, 39, grew up in Wisconsin and attended Wauwatosa schools from fourth grade on. After moving away as an adult, she returned to the area in 2020, first to West Allis and then the Ravenswood neighborhood of Wauwatosa, where she lives with her three children. They attend East High School, Longfellow Middle School and Wilson Elementary.
Experience: Birk studied accounting in college and works as an operations administrator for Elematic, a Brookfield concrete company. This is her first time running for an elected office. She previously served on the school district’s Tosa 2075 Task Force, which was formed by the superintendent during the 2023-24 school year to advise administrators and the school board on a wide range of questions about the district’s future. Birk also has been active in advocating for improvements in the district’s special education programs because of her oldest son’s disabilities.
Why she’s running: Birk has “been involved in public education for a long time” and “active and engaged and involved in politics in general,” she said. After following the district’s operations as a parent and an advocate, she told Tosa Forward News she grew dissatisfied and “started noticing some things just weren’t completely adding up.” She met Chris Merker after both spoke during the public comment period of a past school board meeting, and now they are running alongside each other as two of the 2030 group of candidates.
The label 2030 is intended to signal an urgency for reform, as Wauwatosa and other school districts face what has been described as a looming “fiscal cliff,” with rising expenses outpacing revenues. “We are at a point in this district where if something doesn’t change almost immediately, we are going to very quickly approach a fiscal cliff and go bankrupt,” Birk said.
She also isn’t sure now is the right time to pursue expensive full renovations of the high schools and middle schools, especially after property taxpayers saw this year what the recent referendums “did to their bottom line.” No decisions have been made on the high schools and middle schools, though a committee of parents and other district stakeholders is expected to make a recommendation soon.
As for Birk’s reasons for joining the so-called 2030 slate, Birk said it “really adds strength” to the campaigns of the four aligned candidates. “It’s very hard to run alone, I think, especially in this community where we tend to bond together as groups or cliques,” she said.
Online: https://sites.google.com/view/yesforheather
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586133344587
Liz Heimerl-Rolland
Personal: Heimerl-Rolland, 42, lives in the Olde Hillcrest neighborhood with her husband, Shawn Rolland, a former school board member and current County Board member, and their 17-year-old daughter, a senior at Tosa East. Their son is a senior at UW-Milwaukee. Heimerl-Rolland has lived in Wauwatosa for 15 years and has been active in numerous volunteer roles, from Girl Scouts leader to parent-teacher association service.
Experience: Heimerl-Rolland is completing her first term on the Wauwatosa School Board after her election in April 2023. She also serves as the board’s vice president. She works as a program manager in the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Office of Continuing and Professional Development.
Why she’s running: When she first ran for school board in 2023, “the district, from my perspective, had some pretty glaring challenges,” Heimerl-Rolland told Tosa Forward News. “There were a lot of behavioral incidents happening in our secondary schools. There was a lot of what, to me, seemed like systemic structural issues.” She thought her background in child development, strategic planning and conflict resolution offered skills that could help the district improve.
“I think that we’ve done a really great job foundationally fixing some of the concerns that I saw in 2023,” she said, particularly in behavioral management, academics and finances. She gives much credit to the structures put in place or modified by Superintendent Demond Means and his administration. She said she is running for re-election because she wants to ensure the district continues building on recent improvements.
She also acknowledged that “nobody likes to see their taxes increase,” though she thinks the recent successful referendums are a sign of healthy civic engagement in Wauwatosa. “This really was a community decision,” she said, and “I’m really excited to live in a community where our community does come out and support our schools.”
When asked about the four 2030 candidates seeking to oust her and the other incumbents, Heimerl-Rolland suggested that good leadership includes listening to people with different viewpoints, which she has tried to do on the board. “I’m not sure four of seven on a school board sharing the exact same message is necessarily what our district deserves in its leadership.”
Online: https://www.lizfortosaschools.com/
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/lizfortosaschools
Todd Koehler
Personal: Koehler, 47, and his wife moved to the Swan Park neighborhood in 2011, and their two sons attend McKinley Elementary.
Experience: Koehler works as a branch manager with Master Halco, a fencing products company. This is his first time running for elected office. Like Birk, he served on the district’s Tosa 2075 Task Force. He also was active among McKinley parents who were pressing for changes in how the school was being run under a previous principal after hearing reports of a “toxic professional environment” there.
Why he’s running: Koehler told Tosa Forward News that his experience with district administrators in addressing the concerns at McKinley motivated him to get more active in the civic process. “It just didn’t seem like [concerns] were being handled appropriately.” He fears this is a pattern found in other schools around the district.
He also emphasized the need to take a more long-term view in planning for the district’s facilities. The district’s task force had considered whether declining enrollment and financial constraints could be addressed by closing some schools, though the school board eventually decided instead to move sixth-graders from the middle schools to the elementary schools by 2029 to ensure the elementary schools could remain open. Now, the district has turned its attention to deferred maintenance and the oversized footprint of the middle and high schools.
“We need to take a step back, look at the district as a whole and plot a course forward without limiting what we’re going to explore,” Koehler said. “Some of what we’ve done already has backed us into a corner.”
Koehler is one of the four candidates running under the 2030 banner. Together they have rallied behind some core issues, including a call for greater transparency. District officials currently “do too much behind closed doors,” he said, adding, “we’re not confident that we’re being fiscally responsible with our district finances.”
Online: https://sites.google.com/view/toddfortosa
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586305114713
Melissa Lamers
Personal: Lamers, 44, has lived in the Tosa East Towne neighborhood for 11 years. She has an adult daughter and another daughter who is a freshman at Tosa East, while her husband has a son attending school in a different district.
Experience: Lamers has spent years advocating for her younger daughter, who has multiple disabilities, and has been pleased with the Wauwatosa School District. “We actually have been very happy with special education here.” Lamers has a master’s degree in social work and more than 20 years of experience working as a medical social worker, currently for Aurora Health Care. Her volunteer work in the district has included service on hiring committees for director of special education and Longfellow Middle School principal.
Why she’s running: She said she has been engaged with school staff and teachers throughout her daughter’s years attending schools in the district, and those experiences have now inspired her to run for office for the first time.
“Advocacy is kind of my life professionally and at home,” she told Tosa Forward News. She also has served since 2020 as the school district’s family engagement liaison for special education with the Wisconsin Statewide Parent Educator Initiative.
Lamers, who is not aligned with any other candidate, said she closely follows special education news at the state and national levels and wants to serve on the school board to ensure that the Tosa district has the resources and support it needs, “to make sure that the good that we’ve gotten out of it can continue.”
Her campaign is focused on inclusive education opportunities in the district, students’ mental and physical well-being and robust teacher recruitment and retention. “We’ve had some really great educators,” she said.
Online: https://melissafortosa.com/
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585914075521
Christopher Merker
Personal: Merker, 53, who attended Wauwatosa schools growing up, moved back to the city with his wife in 2003. They have two daughters who attend Longfellow Middle School and McKinley Elementary. They lived for many years in the Pasadena neighborhood before moving to Swan Park in 2021.
Experience: Merker, like Koehler, has been active among parents advocating for better leadership at McKinley Elementary. He works in private asset management for Robert W. Baird & Company in Milwaukee, and he teaches part-time at Marquette University as the co-director of the School of Business’ Sustainability Lab. He ran for the Wauwatosa School Board once, in 2025, but lost narrowly to Jason Wautier.
Why he’s running: Merker has been a driving force behind the creation of the 2030 Tosa Task Force and the slate of four candidates now running under that label. He told Tosa Forward News that he initially was inspired to run in 2025 out of dissatisfaction with the way the district responded to parents’ complaints of teacher turnover at McKinley and then hearing of similar situations at other district schools.
The more Merker learned about the district’s operations, he said he recognized red flags in district governance and accounting, especially the news in 2024 that district officials had discovered a $4 million budgeting error. Officials have insisted that error did not mean any money was misspent, but Merker has called for a “forensic audit” to restore trust in the district’s finances.
Merker ran for election last year to be a voice for greater accountability on the board, and “the best thing that happened to me last year was I lost.” He said losing forced him to refocus on building support in the community for change, first by launching the 2030 Tosa Task Force and now by fielding the slate of candidates campaigning alongside Merker with the 2030 label.
“What you’re seeing is a governance system that’s fallen into dysfunction with respect to how the board fulfills its role of oversight,” Merker said, a problem compounded by what he describes as a “culture that is hostile to civic engagement.” He hopes to change that culture by winning election with the other three aligned candidates, which would give them a majority on the seven-member board.
Online: https://www.chrismerker.com/
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61571509747262
Dan Stemper
Personal: Stemper, 67, grew up in Hales Corners and has lived in Wauwatosa for the past 17 years, in the Pasadena neighborhood. He and his wife and have four adult children, who attended private Catholic schools when they lived in a different district. His wife worked as a school psychologist in the Wauwatosa School District for more than 30 years.
Experience: Stemper is retired, after serving as president of his family-owned TH Stemper Company in Bay View until 2023. It is now run by his younger brothers. He also has previous experience working as a controller for a marketing firm. This is his first time running for public office.
Why he’s running: Stemper knew Merker from when they were neighbors in the Pasadena neighborhood. “He was the one who approached me and said, ‘Would you be interested in running for the school board?’” Stemper is now one of the four candidates running as a slate.
“There’s some change that would really help the district,” Stemper told Tosa Forward News “There’s some things that need some attention, related to the kids, their performances and whatnot.” He was not involved in the 2030 Tosa Task Force until recently but thinks it has gathered “a tremendous amount of information” on issues in the district.
Stemper also said he voted for the district’s two referendums in 2024, though when he received his recent tax bill, it “went up significantly, more than expected.” Greater financial scrutiny is one of the issues he and the other candidates running together are emphasizing.
“Some of the goals are to improve trust, work on transparency and accountability in Wauwatosa schools,” he said. “It can definitely make a huge difference going forward if we are successful in [electing] all four of us who are running together.”
Online: https://sites.google.com/view/dan-stemper-school-board
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586283361328
Jason Wautier
Personal: Wautier, 46, is a native of Door County who moved to the Sheraton Lawns neighborhood 11 years ago with his wife and their daughter. They had enrolled their daughter in Wauwatosa schools, with a special education program for her autism, but after an “awful experience” at Whitman Middle School a few years ago, the family decided to transfer her to a private school.
Experience: Wautier has served on the school board since 2024, when he was appointed to fill a vacancy. He then ran for election in 2025 and defeated Merker. He works as a software engineer for Knight Barry Title Group.
Why he’s running: The family’s frustration with special education at Whitman was what first inspired Wautier to get more engaged with district issues. After fighting to ensure the education and safety of their daughter, “I didn’t want any other parents to go through what my wife and I did,” Wautier told Tosa Forward News. He said he has visited Whitman since then and was impressed by improvements administrators have made in the school’s special education program, and district-wide, Tosa schools are reporting fewer behavioral issues than in previous years.
“I believe we’ve done a lot of good work in the last year and a half. We’ve made a lot of progress,” he said, and he now is seeking his first three-year term on the board to help build on that progress.
Ensuring proper financial controls are an ongoing focus of the school board, and Wautier noted that underfunding at the state level continues to create challenges for Wauwatosa and other school districts. Without statewide changes, “the district is going to have to keep going back to the community every four years for more money,” but he is confident that the district has strengthened its own financial operations.
He also pushed back on claims that the board and administrators have not been open about their decisions on district finances and other matters. On the contrary, Wautier said, the district has made it a priority in recent years to provide information to the public “in abundance” as it works to improve public trust in officials’ decision-making.
Online: https://wautier.com/
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/jason.wautier.school.board
Lynne Woehrle
Personal: Woehrle, 60, and her family moved to Wauwatosa in 2002. She and her husband have two children currently attending West High School and Whitman Middle School and a third who has graduated. They live on the north side of Tosa in the Park Ridge neighborhood, where their first experience with the district was at Madison Elementary. She also serves on the board of the Friends of Hartung Park.
Experience: Woehrle is finishing her first three-year term on the board after being elected in 2023. She also has served as the board’s president for the past year. She is a member of the research faculty at the UW-Milwaukee School of Nursing and works as a social scientist with the university’s Sustainable Peacebuilding program.
Why she’s running: She first chose to run for the school board three years ago because she thought her social science background would be an asset helping her grapple with some of the core issues facing the board. She said she is experienced at taking large amounts of information, making connections and using that knowledge effectively to inform decision-making.
Her children’s experiences with the district’s special education programs also have fueled some of her engagement with district issues. “There’s a lot more work to do in that area,” she told Tosa Forward News. “Schools aren’t serving all of our students yet.”
Woehrle cited three main goals for her running for re-election, starting with centering the needs of students in the face of mounting financial challenges. She also emphasized teacher retention, because consistent staffing can fuel improvement in academic results. And she wants to continue to push the board to follow a policy-oriented model — setting sound policies for the district, revising them when necessary and then ensuring the district has trusted administrators and faculty to carry out those policies.
She added that she approaches the board’s continued challenges with hope for the district’s future. “I’m willing to dig into those tough issues, but I really want to have a positive vision,” she said.
Online: https://www.woehrleforwauwatosaschools.org/
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/woehrle4tosa
