A Juneau Board of Education that made major changes to local schools to deal with a budget crisis apparently will itself go unchanged, as initial results from Tuesday’s municipal election show all three incumbents up for reelection winning their seats by large margins and two recall votes against the top two members of the school board failing decisively.
A school consolidation plan that took effect July 1 was highly controversial while the board was considering it and has experienced some bumps during the first part of the school year. But Elizabeth Siddon, who is comfortably leading all six of the school board candidates, said Thursday the preliminary vote tallies show residents seem to understand the difficulty of the situation the board was facing.
“My takeaway is that they understand the decisions we made,” she said. “Not that they necessarily love them, or acknowledge that they aren’t hard to sort of adjust to the changes that we implemented, but that they understand given the financial realities and the enrollment realities that the decisions we made were best for students.”
Unofficial results for the by-mail released Tuesday night — which include only ballots received before Election Day on Tuesday — show incumbents Siddon (3,526 votes), Will Muldoon (3,171) and Amber Frommherz (2,586 votes) well ahead of challengers Jenny Thomas (1,875), Michele Stuart Morgan (1,658) and Jeff Redmond (1,384). The three candidates getting the most votes get the three open seats.
Jenny Thomas (center) and supporters wave signs for her Juneau Board of Education campaign at the McNugget Intersection on Sept. 19. Thomas, who is trailing in the race for one of three seats in an early vote count, is also one of the lead petitioners for an effort to recall two school board leaders. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
Recall petitions were also on the ballot for school board president Deedie Sorensen and vice president Emil Mackey. Initial results show the vote to recall Sorensen was failing 2,062-4,091 and to recall Mackey 2,175-3,982.
More results were scheduled to be released by the municipal clerk’s office on Friday and next Friday, Oct. 11, with final certification scheduled Oct. 15, although up to three additional days are allowed if necessary.
With five of the board’s seven seats at stake, a vote ousting most or all of the incumbents could have meant more major changes — such as targeting the superintendent’s contract, which Thomas called a top priority — for the district in the coming months. Instead, the incumbents said if they do indeed return to the board they will focus on what is still a challenging set of remaining issues — and work to keep the public better informed about what’s being considered.
“I think having a status quo board is going to be helpful in terms of trying to navigate the fiscal situation we all are in,” Frommherz said. “There’s no new orientation for folks. We are all a little bit more aware of the nuances of our revenue streams and potential legislation that could impact the future. We all went through some tough lessons. We’ve learned some ways that we want to keep monitoring our situation, keeping a pulse on things, especially with the incorporation of our new finance system…I think we all know that we need to be looking ahead more and that was even what other candidates brought up in the campaign.”
Muldoon said the school board will need to start making complex and key decisions once the official enrollment numbers for October are known including work on next year’s budget, plus reviewing student achievement reports and possibly coping with administrative code changes the state Department of Education and Early Development is contemplating. The still-intact board is also in the early stages of an update to its multi-year strategic plan.
The budget crisis emerged as the board’s dominant focus in early January when a deficit of nearly $10 million in a roughly $76 million operating budget was revealed for the fiscal year that ended June 30, which was attributed largely to accounting errors by an administrative services director who resigned the month before. A similar deficit was forecast for the current years and possibly beyond, due to additional factors including flat state funding and a long-term decline in student enrollment.
The consolidation plan approved by the board resulted in one high school and one middle school, instead of two of each, and placed sixth-grade students in elementary schools rather than the middle school.
The recall against Sorensen and Mackey was launched by people — including Thomas — opposed to the consolidation of the high schools, on the basis the board leaders have served for years and failed to respond to a budget crisis that built up during that time. Sorensen and Mackey argued the recall was based on false accusations, that board members acted with the belief information presented to them was factual, and problems such as lack of state funding were a significant contributor to the shortfall.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
