Smith appointed to complete MAPS BOE vacancy

BY TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR

The Merrill Area Public Schools (MAPS) Board of Education (BOE) called a special meeting on Wednesday, May 22, 2024, to interview candidates who had applied to fill the BOE vacancy created by Linda Yingling when she stepped down from the Board last month. Yingling’s term was scheduled to end in 2025.
Following interviews, the BOE deliberated and then selected and appointed Jon Smith to fill the spot. Jon, who is a Merrill native and a 1990 Merrill High School graduate, lives in the town of Pine River and is a past member of the MAPS BOE.
“I was a Board member from 2016-2021,” he said. “I resigned my position in October of 2021 shortly after I started a student teacher semester in Marathon which was required to complete my license to teach high school science. The workload was too much to handle on top of everything else I had going on.”
But now Jon is back and ready to serve again. “I saw Linda had resigned and the Board needed a candidate,” Jon said. “I thought my past experience would quickly relieve the Board of the vacancy so I stepped up to serve out her term. I will then consider running for a full term in the spring.”
The son of lifelong Merrill residents, Floyd and Loretta Smith, Jon is now married with two children. He and his wife, Michelle, have a son who graduated from MAPS in 2018 and a daughter who graduated from MAPS in 2020, and they have a small hobby farm with sheep, goats, horses, and a donkey.
In addition, “I am a UW-Madison pharmacist of 28 years … and am the President of Young’s Drug Stores in Merrill and Wausau,” Jon said. “In addition to this administrative position, I teach chemistry, physics, and engineering full time at Newman Catholic High School, Wausau.”
“I have a passion for teaching and supporting local students,” he said. In his “spare” time, “I continue to enjoy building sets for high school musical productions, most recently Beauty and the Beast in Wausau and soon for an upcoming DC Everest production.”