The contestants to be on the Juneau school Board this year mention the state’s education funding as their major issue.
The sluggish funding and budget cuts on the national level has weighed on school districts across Alaska for many years. This year Juneau School District was one of them. Juneau School District was hit with a shortfall of $758,000 after Governor. Mike Dunleavy vetoed half of an anticipated boost in funding for one year.
In the meantime, the department of education in the state informed the school district that it could not utilize additional “outside limits” funds provided by city officials to plug budget gaps — which it’s been relying on for a long time.
Two seats with terms of three years are up for election in the School Board. One of these candidates is teachers All three of them have children who attend Juneau schools.
Britteny Cioni-Haywood, administrator operations for Alaska. She is also adjunct faculty member of economics at the University of Alaska Southeast. She says the district’s problems in teacher retention and recruitment are all tied to the state’s budgets, and is transforming into an “critical issue for the entire .”
The span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”It is also beyond the authority of the school board, as such, but considering our close proximity to the capitol of the state I believe it would be crucial for us to lobby and to encourage our family and friends to be advocates for this money,” Cioni-Haywood said in an interview.
David Noon is a history professor at UAS and was the faculty Senate president for two years. In his position he was a vocal opponent to cuts in the budget of the state’s universities. He said that inadequate public education funding led to staff and teachers reaching an impasse.
” style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”We’ve been through a number of cuts, which are more than where the district is able to be able to successfully meet its obligations to its students that is the most important task the community faces,” Noon said in an interview. “So dealing with the crisis in funding and resolving our budget deficit will have to be top of the list. .”
Paige Sipniewski also works for the state, and is a long-time Juneau resident. She says that while Juneau needs to tackle problems like lower enrollment as well as cost increases, she would like to work on improving the academic performance of students in reading, math, and writing. In addition, any increases in state funding need to be linked to this.
The span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”An increase in the amount also has to be made to improve our children’s test scores and we’ll need to observe an improvement, in any funds that are likely to increase the scores on tests,” she said in an interview.
One area in which the candidates this year differ is allowing transgender children to use bathrooms as well as play on teams of sport that are in line with their gender and gender identity. In their interviews, Cioni-Haywood as well as Noon both stated that they believe students are entitled to express themselves however they like, and Sipniewski stated that she believed in “protecting the innocence of girls” by preventing transgender children access to the same restrooms or locker rooms as their gender counterparts.
span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”Little girls shouldn’t be allowed to have transgender girls in their restroom or even on the teams of sports because there’s a biological distinction that I do not believe it’s acceptable for children to change in locker rooms, or using bathrooms that are shared with girls,” Sipniewski stated.
At an Juneau Chamber of Commerce candidate forum in Juneau the students on the school board also had a disagreement on the district’s policies regarding the books that should be accessible in the school library. Cioni-Haywood as well as Noon have said they are in favor of this policy as it stands today. Sipniewski stated that she is against “anything concerning gender, sex or religion, profanity, race, drugs and religion, as it relates to the literature available to children at school.”
A long-time member of the school board Brian Holst originally filed to be a candidate for reelection and later pulled his candidature. He said to The Juneau Empire he wanted to allow other candidates to join the board. The board members Martin Stepetin Sr. did not apply for the second time.
The voting in this year’s local election will end on October. 3.
The KTOO’s Katie Anastas contributed to this report.
