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Candidate wants to encourage kids to ‘think outside the box’

Maggie O'Neill
Cindy Trigg
ALL |

She goes door to door selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts to raise scholarship money for George Whittell High School students.

“We’re known as the doughnut ladies,” said Cindy Trigg, 50, a middle Kingsbury resident, of herself and a friend.

“You don’t have to have a child in school to volunteer or want to help,” she said.



“The school district is a community effort not just for parents who have kids in schools.”

Trigg saw her last child, Matt, graduate from George Whittell High School in 2003-04 and head off to the University of Nevada, Reno.



Trigg is running for school board Seat 3, which represents Lake Tahoe, Kingsbury Grade, Stateline, Round Hill and Skyland. She has lived in the area since 1990. She is running against Lawrence Howell, 32, executive director of the at-risk youth program Rite of Passage, in the primary election on Sept. 7.

Terese M. Finlay of Zephyr Cove decided not to seek the office, but it was too late to remove her name from the ballot, thus the primary election remains valid and the top two vote getters will go to the general election.

The general election is Nov. 2 and will include the two candidates who received the most votes from the primary, said Douglas County Clerk Barbara Reed.

“We have state testing requirements, we have Douglas County proficiency tests and now we have another level of testing with No Child Left Behind,” she said.

“The one thing I get concerned about is the fact that it’s testing, testing, testing and data, data, data. What I want to make sure is we don’t forget to encourage our kids to get curious, to have an imagination and to think outside the box.”

She is familiar with each of the lake schools as Matt attended Zephyr Cove Elementary School, Kingsbury Middle School and Whittell.

“I’m passionate about fairness,” she said. “Up here, we have three small schools, and in the valley, they have more schools and larger schools, and we need someone who is really passionate about where they live and about what they feel so that we can have a fair representation about our school in the Valley.”

Trigg is a senior flight attendant for American Airlines, and though on leave, has worded for American for 26 years.

“I think communication is the most important thing that I can bring to the board,” she said. “The fact that I’m an approachable person and I’ve dealt with people internationally makes me a good candidate.”

She believes that students should receive equal opportunities in school.

She thinks academics should be accessible to all students, even those not in the upper echelon of straight A’s.

“A lot of my son’s friends used to come over to the house and I would listen to them,” she said. “What I started thinking about, and what I saw, was that sometimes they would fail at something or would get low grades.

“They were taught how to do something over instead of figuring out where they excelled,” she said. “You have to take the time to give them self-confidence.”

Her strongest belief is excellence in education and her top goal is academics.

“Every child should be challenged,” she said.

“From what I experienced in the airplane industry, there are so many different types of people and so many different types of kids. Some students develop later and mature later on. Not every student is an A student, but maybe a B or C student and we have to figure out how to bring them in.”

Trigg is a service parent and volunteer with the scholarship committee at Whittell, a committee member on the Douglas County Democratic Women’s Scholarship Fund and a Whittell cheerleading squad advisor.

She likes being involved.

“Being in such a small community, you get to know the kids really well.”

She has a passion for being fair and believes that academics, computers and extracurricular activities need to be accessible.

“The resources are so limited that we need to figure out how to be successful.”


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