This article has been moved in front of the Juneau Empire’s paywall.
Amber Frommherz: Incumbent Juneau Board of Education candidate
Age: 61
Occupation: Outreach and development program manager
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It took place a week after school began – assessments of how schools are doing under the new consolidation plan may have changed.
What is your assessment of how schools are doing under the new consolidation plan?
I think there’s still a lot of adjustment that is taking place. I think there’s some reasonable adjustments that have to take place, some due to consolidation, and there’s other adjustments that have to take place just to kick off the school year. I think we have to acknowledge that our staff had a busy summer. There’s an emotional adjustment students and staff need to have. Families have to work through it still and then just even probably physical adjustments because there were physical moving of materials and furniture. I think that the current adjustment to consolidation, right now is as can be expected.
It’s a delicate balance going on right now, acknowledging how far we’ve come, physically, emotionally, logistically to be here, as well as expecting excellence, because that’s what Juneau School District stands for is to strive for excellence. This is an expected adjustment, considering the big transition. I think we just have to thank everyone for going through it together.
If you could rewind the calendar to early January when you first learned the extent of the district’s financial crisis what would you do differently in terms of process and what you voted on?
In the moment, we tended to the ‘24-‘25 budget first, with the intent of coming back around to the current school year, ‘23-‘24 budget. If anything, what I would tell myself back then would have been continue with the 2023-2024 budget, and then proceed with the ‘24-‘25 budget.
Would you have done anything differently in terms of how you presented the alternative model to the school board?
I don’t think I would have done anything different other than trying to defend my stance a little bit more. Being a different voice is hard and scary. But at the same time, I think that’s the best part about democratic processes is that you hear these different voices and you hear these different perspectives. I think what I would have told myself, as just a personal learning journey is have a little bit more courage than I did.
What issues and needs do you feel were overlooked with the budget dominating the board’s attention during the second half of the school year?
The last year was the first year of getting used to a new superintendent and some newer cabinet folks that are filling those roles. What we started was really trying to understand each other working together and understanding how Superintendent Hauser works. I think just coming into a rhythm of areas of volunteering at the board level with our cabinet and Superintendent. So just getting definition of terms, carrying on the curriculum review, just finding a rhythm with the new team. And the aligning with our reports and review schedules of certain items. That would have been nice, just really establishing that these communication points of how the school district is doing, identifying those areas, monitoring them, and those areas of guiding our actions forward, I think would have been great.
What do you see as the top non-budget priorities if you are on the board after the Oct. 1 election?
I would say my priority is really minding the consolidation piece, how everyone is adjusting to it, and ensuring that services to the students, experiences that the students had access to before are not declining in quantity or quality.
We said activities weren’t going to decline. Is that true? How is that working out? And if there are some areas that we can’t pull everything off, knowing why, and not letting those opportunities go without being sure that we have looked far and wide to see if there are other ways that we can provide that experience or those services for students. Even if it is a new structure, where else can we find new ways to fill these needs or fit these needs?
The Juneau School District was the first in the state to take steps toward legally challenging a state ban on transgender girls playing on girls’ sports teams, but efforts were abandoned due to the budget crisis. Do you believe resuming such a challenge is a good use of district time and resources, and why or why not?
Discrimination is discrimination. It’s still a good idea to allocate time and attention to this particular situation. A lot of research that I’ve seen so far indicates that the actual accounts of transgender females participating in historically known female sports is very low. So to me, why the need for these big policy changes? I think that if policies like this are easily made right now, then when is it going to stop? Who are we going to discriminate against next?
What long-term planning should the school board be considering now given the contradicting future circumstances involving: 1) the homeporting of a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker in Juneau during the next few years and 2) a steadily continuing decline in the student population during the coming decade?
We definitely do need to be planning for an icebreaker, as well as understanding and projecting the funding loss due to a declined enrollment coming up. What I’m concerned with is capacity levels, especially now at the high school level, middle school level and our home school option. Is it enough? Is there physical space for the students?
Financially answering that to think about facilities wise, financially planning for facilities and financially planning for staff. Staff to provide enough classes while also providing staff to provide a potential homeschool opportunity for our homeschool service for military families. I’m a military family and I knew other families who chose homeschool because of the duty station assignments.
Physical capacity, academic capacity, course offerings for homeschool delivery and in-school delivery, and retaining our teachers. So a fiscal planning around that as well. How do we keep the same strong cohort of teachers here who know our students? I think that’s going to be in relation to their pay to stay here. Thinking about where we are going to be impacted for the icebreaker and declined enrollment.
Detail specific accomplishments you (not the board as a whole) achieved on behalf of the Juneau School District.
Early in my time at the school board, I helped bring a requirement of the activities department to provide training for our coaches. So the coaches would be trained on improving their skills of working with students from my diverse background. I know that took a little bit of time to get implemented, but I learned that there’s training this school year for that.
In a recent meeting that we had, I advocated to increase the number of secondary teachers, to allocate some money to increase the number of secondary teachers than originally planned. There’s a lot of focus and rightfully so, focus on getting our elementary schools prepared to answer the demands of the Alaska Reads Act and to meet all those standards. But I think at the same time, we have secondary students that need teachers as well. I made a motion to increase the number of secondary teachers up to five. So we went from two to five.
Also the fact of trying and attempting to rethink how our approach was going in terms of our approach to consolidation.
In a few sentences, what else would you like voters to know about why you are running for school board and hope to achieve?
I am running again because I feel like there’s work that still needs to be done. I acknowledge that I was a part of the board that made our community all have to adjust to a new consolidated middle school and high school and relocation of several of our alternative programs. I want to be able to continue to answer to consequences, good and bad, positive and harmful of that decision.
I feel like I’ve been able to grow into this position and be a person to speak for different students from different backgrounds. I’ve made different connections and relationships with many families in Juneau. We have a very unique, diverse group of students in Juneau. Just being able to weigh a lot of these needs and different degrees of needs and interests, I feel like I’m a member that can help bring these to life.
