Kathleen Nagler Straus (born December 3, 1923) served as a member of the Michigan State Board of Education from 1993–2016. She has been continuously involved in civic organizations in Michigan, since moving to Detroit in 1952. Her volunteer and professional roles have included the Presidency of the

League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a nonpartisan American nonprofit political organization. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include Voter registration, registering voters, providing voter information, boosting voter turnout and adv ...

of Detroit, Executive Director of People and Responsible Organizations (PRO) for Detroit, President of the Michigan State Board of Education, and Secretary of the

National Association of State Boards of Education The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) is a nonprofit private association that represents U.S. state and territory boards of education. Founded in 1958, the association initially met in conjunction with the annual conferenc ...

Personal life and education

Kathleen Nagler was born in

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater ...

, the daughter of an Austrian-born lawyer and a homemaker. Her family moved to Belle Harbor for four years when she was as a young child, but returned to

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

thereafter, and grew up on the West Side. She graduated from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

and worked as a teacher, and an economist in the

United States Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the Treasury, national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current United States federal executive departments, U.S. government departments. ...

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

. She met her first husband, Everett Straus in Washington. They married in New York in 1948, when she was an analyst at the

Federal Reserve Bank of New York The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. It is responsible for the Second District of the Federal Reserve System, which encompasses the New York (state), State of New York, the 12 norther ...

. In 1952, Everett Straus was offered a job with a cigar manufacturer RG Dunn in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

, and they relocated with their young son, Peter. She began volunteer work with the

, the

Adlai Stevenson Adlai Stevenson may refer to: * Adlai Stevenson I Adlai Ewing Stevenson (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) was an American politician and diplomat who served as the 23rd vice president of the United States from 1893 to 1897 under President Gr ...

presidential campaign, and

millage A property tax (whose rate is expressed as a percentage or per mille, also called ''millage'') is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net we ...

campaigns. Her second child, Barbara was born a few years later. Everett Straus died on Thanksgiving Day in 1967, when their children were aged 16 and 10. In May 2008, as the 85 year old President of the Michigan State Board of Education, she married the Honorable Walter Shapero, a 77 year old bankruptcy judge still working full-time.

Career

Volunteer work

Upon moving to Detroit in 1952, Straus became involved with the League of Women voters, the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign, millage campaigns to support local schools, and her local school PTA. Within a decade, she was president of the League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Detroit, and was a member of the Board of the League of Women Voters of Michigan from 1963–1965. In 1963, she was active in the Michigan Constitutional Convention. She was elected chair of the Board of Wayne County Community College, but without tax revenue to support the college, the board dissolved in 1966. She co-chaired mayor

Jerome Cavanagh Jerome Patrick Cavanagh (June 16, 1928 – November 27, 1979) was an American politician who served as the mayor of Detroit, Michigan from 1962 to 1970. Initially a popular figure, his reputation was seriously damaged by the city's 1967 riots, t ...

's re-election campaign in 1965, and was hired to lead the millage campaign of 1966. Cavanaugh named her to the Detroit Commission on Community Relations in 1966. During the 1980s, she co-founded the Michigan Tax Informational Council and served as the council's first president. She has also been President of the American Jewish Committee, Detroit Region and Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit, as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Michigan State Board for Public Junior and Community Colleges, the Detroit Science Center, the Advisory Board of the American Jewish Committee, ArtServe Michigan, Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, Michigan Women’s Studies Association, and Communities in Schools in Detroit.

Professional career

Following the death of her first husband, Mayor Cavanaugh named Straus assistant director of Detroit's Community Renewal Agency. At the end of his administration, she took a position with the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, a regional planning agency. She resigned from this position to run for Congress in 1974 to succeed Martha Griffiths in Michigan's 17th congressional district, but lost in the democratic primary. She then became staff director for the

Michigan Senate The Michigan Senate is the upper house of the Michigan Legislature. Along with the Michigan House of Representatives, it composes the state legislature, which has powers, roles and duties defined by Article IV of the Michigan Constitution, ado ...

Education Committee, and later Director of Governmental Relations for the Michigan Association of School Boards. She was also the executive director of PRO Detroit (People and Responsible Organizations for Detroit), a coalition of business, labor, civic groups, and schools established to implement the court-ordered desegregation of schools in Detroit. Her final professional position before election to the Michigan State Board of Education was as President of the Center for Creative Studies, a Detroit arts college.

Michigan State Board of Education

First elected to the Michigan State Board of Education in 1992, Straus was re-elected for two additional eight-year terms, ending on January 1, 2017, when she was 93 years old. During this time, she served seven two-year terms as President of the Board. As a board member, she advocated for services to promote the social, emotional, and physical health of students and their families, including the provision of social services to communities in school buildings after school hours. She was a strong supporter of arts programs, and a frequent visitor to schools and classrooms. She advocated for accountability measures and quality controls for charter schools.

Awards

Straus has been awarded the David Kysilko Award from the National Association of State Boards of Education (2016), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Anti-Defamation League (2004), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the

American Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a civil rights group and Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the wi ...

(2010), the Wade Hampton McCree Jr. Award from the

Federal Bar Association The Federal Bar Association (FBA) is the primary voluntary professional organization for private and government lawyers and judges practicing and sitting in federal courts in the United States. Six times a year, the FBA prints ''The Federal Lawye ...

– Eastern District of Michigan Chapter (2011), and has been selected as a member of the Hunter College Hall of Fame (1994), the Michigan Education Hall of Fame (1994), and the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame (2000).

References

External links

Video interview of Straus from the Michigan Living History Project

Audio interview of Straus from the Detroit 1967 oral history project of the Detroit Historical Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Straus, Kathleen Nagler 1923 births Living people American people of Austrian descent Educators from Michigan Hunter College alumni Politicians from Detroit People from Harlem Women in Michigan politics Michigan Democrats School board members in Michigan Educators from New York City American women educators 21st-century American women American women centenarians