Completed2025 EXCEL BJ Haak Community Service Award recipient Jeannie Lanz

2025 EXCEL BJ Haak Community Service Award recipient Jeannie Lanz

Date: Monday, May 5, 2025 at 5:40 PMActual: Monday, May 5, 2025 at 5:40 PM

This award is named in memory of the incomparable B.J. Haak. B.J. was a member of the Community Education Advisory Board for over 40 years, because she loved education and community service. She was the first woman ever elected to our District 622 Board of Education in 1975. She was very involved in her community with selfless volunteering in an extraordinary number of roles: advocate for the Midwest Kidney Foundation, home visitor for Catholic Charities, Chairman of the U of MN foreign student exchange, girls sports coach, and much, much more. She loved giving back to her community that she felt gave so much to her. Jeannie Lanz was unanimously nominated by the entire Community Education Advisory Council as the recipient of the 2025 BJ Haak Community Service EXCEL Award. The BJ Haak Community Service Award is presented annually to someone who exemplifies BJ’s passion for education, volunteerism, and community service. For over 30 years, Jeanie has been a quiet but powerful force in our Community Education office—mentoring staff, guiding advisory members, supporting leadership transitions, and offering her wisdom with kindness and professionalism. Known for her thoughtful insight and unwavering support, Jeannie truly embodies the spirit of this award. Congratulations, Jeannie, and thank you for being our “little bit of magic.”

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Published Monday, May 5, 2025

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I am here to recognize the BJ Hack Community Service Award winner who was nominated by the entire community advisory board. This year's awardee is the incomparable Jeannie Lans who exhibits these same values in our community education office and the 622 district in so many ways. So, let's count the ways. She's always there to help educate staff, volunteers, and the community advisory board. Someone described Jeanie as a chat GPT before there was something called chat GPT. I had to look it up, too. Here's what a chat GPT is described as. A model which interacts in a conversational way to answer follow-up questions, admits mistakes, challenges incorrect premises, and rejects inappropriate requests. I think someone may have been watching Genie in action from the community ed office and the district when they came up with this model. Every office has that one person who binds everyone together. Right away when I started in community ed, I realized Genie was that person. I think we all kind of consider her the office mom even though she hates uh being called that. But it all comes from like a really endearing place of feeling like she really cares for you and she's genuinely like invested in um how you're doing, how she can help you, how we all can like work together to be the most efficient, but also like just be good people surrounded by good people. I think that's really important to her. Jeanie is one of the most dedicated and devoted people I know in her work with community education. She always goes above and beyond to help anyone with anything. Everyone adores her. I worked with Jeie the entire time that she was in the community ed department up until my retirement and I will say there is nobody more deserving of this award than you, Genie. And you are the person that knows everything. you know every coordinator's job and you can help us all out with whatever questions we have. You you just know where everything is located, where to find the reports, who to talk to in administration if we need to. You're the go-to gal. Anytime we need anything, we know we can call Genie. If we don't know who to call or what to do, we go to Genie. What would Jeie do is kind of our motto because she's kind of the glue that holds Community Ed together. Jeanie's just always been such a rock of stability. Uh any question I have, she's always there with the answer and and always willing to help. Uh she never um looks down on anybody for not having the answers. She's just always with a positive attitude wanting to help, whether it's figuring out a budget question or figuring out who to talk to. Uh she's always there, always the epitome of professionalism. Uh and has just been a great co-orker. Jeie is the person who is 622. She's been here and knows all the ins, the outs, the the ways in which things work. She tells me what days are holidays so that I don't report to work on on those days. She is always willing to take time to listen to you, ask you illuminating quest…

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