David Turk says his campaign for the Hamilton Southeastern School Board is, at its heart, a thank-you note.

Turk, a Republican running in District 3, is the latest guest in my series of podcast interviews with HSE School Board candidates ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Turk grew up near the Fishers–Noblesville line, graduated from Noblesville High School and earned a biology degree from Purdue University. He has a small place in local sports history: he played for Noblesville in the first Fishers High School football game 20 years ago. After working in food safety and quality assurance, he joined his wife Rachel’s family real estate business in Champaign, Illinois. Today he is a real estate developer who restores older downtown buildings for new uses.

The family moved to Fishers in 2021, in large part for HSE Schools. Their middle son, James, was born blind, and Turk said remote Braille instruction during the pandemic was not working. James is now a third grader at Brooks School Elementary, and Turk praised the district’s special education staff and the family’s IEP team.

“This is my way of saying thank you to HSE,” Turk said.

Turk said he is “absolutely pro-referendum,” arguing that teacher pay has not kept pace with inflation and that state property tax changes have hit local schools and cities hard. If the referendum passes, he said he would lean on the district’s financial projections when setting the annual tax rate while respecting taxpayers. If it fails, he said across-the-board cuts and larger class sizes would be on the table.

“Public schools are a pillar of our community,” Turk said.

On enrollment, Turk noted that elementary numbers are down as longtime residents stay in their homes. He supports HSE’s move to accept transfer students from other districts and said families should be made more aware of that option.

Turk is running as a Republican under the state law that now lets school board candidates declare a party. He said he has always voted Republican and would have felt he was “hiding behind a nonpartisan label” otherwise, but he pledged to keep politics and activism out of board decisions. Asked how voters should judge his first year, he said: whether the board kept its focus on students and kept the drama out.

We also discussed college and career readiness, including trades programs; teacher recruitment and retention; student mental health; and the board’s role in overseeing Superintendent Matt Kegley.

The LarryInFishers Podcast series is sponsored by Citizens State Bank.

Listen to the full conversation at this link or the link below.