SPRING GROVE – Michelle Graham was on concession-stand duty when someone suggested she apply for the vacant seat on Richmond-Burton High School District 157 board.

She’d been a “closet school board observer,” she said, but until the controversy over the school’s now-under-construction fieldhouse, she’d never been one to speak up at meetings.

But sitting there, listening to the “naysayers” go on about fiscal responsibility, she decided to add her two cents – to the pleasure of many of the other student-athlete parents present.