Four have filed to run for two Juneau School Board seats, including a recent Thunder Mountain High School graduate, a former school board aspirant and a NOAA fisheries manager. The deadline to file was 4:30 p.m. Monday.
Kevin Allen, Jason Hart, Steve Whitney and Dan DeBartolo are competing to fill two school board seats left vacant by members Barbara Thurston and Lisa Worl; neither are running for re-election.
Allen, 18, was a student representative on the school board last year. Having just graduated from the Juneau School District in May, he said he’ll add a new perspective to the body.
“I’m a recent student coming out of it. Whatever policy the board made, I’m essentially one of the people who has an insight into the affect of it,” he said.
Allen, who’s Tlingit and Athabascan, said he also wants to ensure “Native representation on the board.” He highlighted member Lisa Worl’s work. “Those are some pretty big shoes to fill, but at least with my experience as the school board student representative behind me, I could at least give it a go at filling those shoes.”
Allen completed an internship with U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. He’s a sales associate at OfficeMax and plans to enroll in classes at University of Alaska Southeast in the spring. He said he’s also been spending his time reaching out to community members, including leaders at Sealaska, Goldbelt, Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority.
[From the halls of high school to the halls of Congress]
As a school board member, one issue that Allen wants to keep an eye on is activities. He wants to ensure they don’t go away.
“I want to make sure that they are at least on a decent level throughout the entire course of a kid’s life in the Juneau School District,” Allen said. “That system creates possible careers within the kids and influences them into what they want to do in the future. That’s what it did for me. I did student government in high school and it led me to what I’m doing right now.”
Jason Hart is likely a familiar name to voters. He ran for school board last year and was about 460 votes shy of winning a seat.
“It’s not something I was just ready to try once and throw the towel in when it didn’t work out in my favor,” the 38-year-old Hecla Mining Company Greens Creek contract administrator said.
Hart waffled on whether to run, but after checking with his family to make sure they supported his decision to try again, he threw in his name.
“Just hoping that running last year and seeing me run again this year, people will take that into account and know that I’m serious about trying to better the school system for the kids,” Hart said.
[Candidate profile: Jason Hart, school board]
As a parent of a 10-year-old fifth grader and a baseball coach for Little League and Midnight Suns, Hart said, “I have a definite interest in the youth of Juneau and moving them forward in making them better students and young adults through the education process.”
He said the biggest issue facing the school board is the budget, which continues to get cut each year.
“They’ll just be more cuts,” he said. “The decisions are getting tougher and tougher and I want to take a common sense approach to it. Whatever decisions are made, my main concern is they’re made with the best intentions and interests of the students and the children in the community.”
Steve Whitney said he’s running for school board because he saw a need for more people to run.
“I’ve never wanted to be a politician but I would’ve felt guilty not throwing my hat in. Schools are something I’ve been following for quite a while,” he said.
Whitney, 48, has two sons — one in middle school and one in high school. He said he’s been watching the path of the school board for about 12 years.
“One of the reasons is I feel — and I’ve talked to a lot of other people who feel the same way — they feel disenfranchised in the school board, so one thing I really want to do is restore the public process more and try to make community more involved in the school district and be more responsive to the public,” he said.
As a fisheries manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Whitney said he has a strong quantitative background and regularly deals with differing points of view on the regulatory level.
Whitney said the school district needs to do a “much better job of preparing kids for college.”
He said the district can help students get more Advanced Placement credits to fulfill general college requirements so “we can boost the probabilities of them coming through with less debt and a higher graduation rate from college.”
He said the biggest issue for the whole state, including the schools, is the “frightening budget outlook.”
“Everything is going to be dictated by the budget and it’s going to be hard and a lot of it will be unpleasant. Whatever everyone’s personal views are, we’re all going to have to try to hold the ship together in hard financial times.”
Dan DeBartolo was the last to file right at deadline. His name appeared on the city’s candidate list after the business day ended. The Empire will include information on him at a later time.
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct Jason Hart’s name, previously printed as Josh Hart.
Read more news:
Missing man’s sister: ‘My brother’s gone’
Derby review: Smaller numbers, bigger fight
Exploring the gray area between cultural appreciation and appropriation in Juneau
