3 run for 2 school board seats

PALMER — The race for the Mat-Su Borough School District Board of Education contains three candidates and two seats.

The deadline to file to run passed on Friday. Erick Cordero, currently the board’s vice president, will face off against newcomer Lynette Warhus. Incumbent Ole Larson has not drawn a challenger. In alphabetical order, the candidates introduce themselves:

Erick Cordero

Erick Cordero, of Palmer, heads an organization that recruits attorneys willing to do pro bono work and pairs them with low-income Alaskans.

He came to the board to fill out the unexpired term of Brian Sullivan, who resigned due to a conflict with his day job. He was appointed, then elected, but the whole thing only added up to about two years on the board.

Still, Cordero said, he was very proud to have been given the chance to serve. Cordero is from Mexico and just a year before he was elected he became a U.S. citizen. Later, he was asked to address a group of recently naturalized citizens.

“Not only did I become eligible to vote, but I ran for office, got elected to office and had a chance to speak at a naturalization ceremony,” Cordero said.

As far as issues he wants to address on the board, Cordero said he thinks parental choice is a big deal. By that he refers to charter schools and magnet schools. He said he sees indicators everywhere of their popularity, like a standing-room-only crowd he encountered at a meeting to discuss setting up a science and technology program at Machetanz Elementary.

“When I hear about parents lining up for hours to sign their kids up for Career and Technical High School, that’s another indicator,” Cordero said.

Cordero has personally been the beneficiary of the ability to make those choices; he has kids at Fronteras Spanish Immersion Charter School.

He said he also wants to include more parents in the process.

“I want to make sure that parents, especially those with two jobs and a commute and young children, have a voice in the school board,” Cordero said.

Achieving that, he said, can be tricky when you also have to make sure to keep a watchful eye on the bottom line.

Ole Larson

Asked if he takes his lack of a challenger as an endorsement of the work he’s been doing thus far on the board, Wasilla’s Ole Larson said he does.

“I hope so. I think that people see that we’re doing a good job,” Larson said.

Larson is a former corrections officer who retired as superintendent of the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. He still serves on the Alaska Parole Board. His three children were all educated in Mat-Su schools and two of them now work for the district, as did his wife before she retired.

“Education’s been in the family,” Larson said, noting that his time working in prisons has given him a unique perspective. “I see what happens to kids that don’t stay in high school. Not all kids, don’t get me wrong, will end up in the criminal justice system just because they didn’t finish high school, but there sure are a lot of them that do.”

He said he feels the district was energized under late superintendant Ken Burnley. That’s most apparent on the financial side, Larson said, where the district is now able to project out for 10 years what costs and revenues will be. They’ve brought in resources from Outside and are working to expand vocational education.

“I don’t want it to slow down at all,” he said of why he’s running again.

Lynette Warhus

Hailing from Meadow Lakes and making her first run for school board, Lynette Warhus said she decided to enter politics mainly out of dissatisfaction.

“I’m actually running because I didn’t like some of the policies coming out of the administration there,” she said.

For one thing, she doesn’t like the way the district has started grading elementary school students on a four-point scale. It’s not a wide enough spectrum, she said, since a student can’t get a four unless he or she is working above grade level. A three, she pointed out, could be anything from a C to an A.

“I say they go back to percentages,” Warhus said.

She said she’s also worried about spending at the district, wondering if flashy technology like the Prometheum smart boards used in a lot of classes are worth the money. As for budget cuts, she said she thinks the district might be top-heavy and could stand to cut some staff at the administrative building.

Warhus said she doesn’t care for the curriculum, saying the district switches the way it teaches subjects too often and is usually too rigid in insisting teachers stick to it.

“They should be allowed to put a little bit of their own selves into their teaching,” Warhus said.

A stay-at-home mother of five, Warhus said she homeschools her kids for kindergarten. She thinks serving on the school board will be eye-opening and hopes to learn a lot on the job if elected.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.