Four in running for Mat-Su school board seat

PALMER — Quite possibly the single word to describe the quartet of candidates for Mat-Su Borough School Board Seat F would be “diverse.” That would be diverse in their opinions, but also diverse in their geography. Here’s a brief look at each, two days before Tuesday’s election:

Donna Dearman

Dearman is a former special education and American Sign Language teacher and vice principal who lives in Talkeetna. She holds a doctorate in education administration.

She said she’s running because she wants to bring some of that geographic diversity to a board that is populated mostly with people who live in the greater Palmer and Wasilla core areas.

“Diversity on a board is always a good thing, and I think that having someone from a smaller community like Talkeetna gives those smaller communities from throughout the Mat-Su Borough someone they can relate to,” she said.

In her campaign for the board, Dearman said she visited every borough school and got to know what they all do.

“I think the school board now is doing a very good job under the leadership of Dr. Paramo,” she said, citing improving test scores and graduation rates. “Student achievement is going up and the options and opportunities for students out there are vast.”

She said she would also bring a unique perspective.

“A proponent of other avenues and things for students with special needs would be a good thing, because as more and more students are moving into the Mat-Su, students are coming with those issues,” she said.

She said the current building boom in the district is both exciting and challenging.

“They bring a lot of challenges with them from finding places to put them to what kind of building you’re going to build and those sorts of things and what sort of programs are going to be offered there and the students that will go there those sorts of things,” she said.

Stephen Jacobson

Jacobson’s name appeared on the list of people hoping to fill in after Lynn Gattis left the board to serve in the state Legislature. A Meadow Lakes resident, he has also run for the Legislature once himself, making a respectable showing against Rep. Mark Neuman.

Jacobson said that as a parent, he’s often been frustrated by the school district. As an example, he pointed to his daughter’s experience. She was an advanced student in middle school, taking Algebra I before she got to high school. But since middle school grades don’t appear on student transcripts, her college of choice in Texas wouldn’t accept her because they couldn’t see she’d taken the course.

“She had t o take her second college of choice, which was disappointing to her because she worked hard so that she could go to the college of her choice,” Jacobson said.

He said other parents have told him they ran into the same problem and he believes it’s a particular weakness at the district.

“We try to help those that aren’t up to their grade level and then the ones that are above their grade level get caught in a conundrum,” he said.

He also said that some parents have told him their children got straight As, but struggled with standardized tests.

“I think it’s because our standards are too low and they need to be brought up,” he said.

Jacobson said he wants to be a voice of fiscal responsibility. That applies in this current district building boom and would mean taking everything into account when building a school rather than just making it look nice.

“I look at Machetanz (Elementary School). They built the school, got some awards and forgot about the roads that go to the school,” he said.

Neal Lacy

Lacy is the incumbent in the race. Hailing from Wasilla, he said that his three-year tenure has been a positive one for the district.

“I would like to continue the positive things that we’ve done in the last three years. When I first took office, we were in financial straits. We’ve come out of that. As a district, we’re in really good condition financially, better than we were,” he said.

Lacy is a retired educator who made his career teaching students how to work on small motors at both Wasilla and Colony high schools. He built the Colony program from scratch. It focused on stuff like snowmachines, four-wheelers and outboard motors.

“The cool stuff in life, and that’s part of our Alaska lifestyle,” is how Lacy described it. “We had standards that according to the certification agency is what young mechanics would need to be efficient at their trade.”

He said he’s got his focus squarely on the bottom line.

“My main thing is trying to keep us financially solvent and trying to keep us moving in the right direction,” he said.

James Tapley

Tapley hails from Sutton, where he lives on a road he had built and that, when he couldn’t find a name no one else had used, he named after himself.

“I’ve got plenty of time to do it for one thing, and plus I want to make a change. I’m a taxpayer. I see a lot of money wasted. I want to see good quality teachers for our schools,” he said succinctly of why he’s running.

He said he’d like to see changes to the tenure system at the district. He wants teachers evaluated for their performance.

He said he also wants to see more vocational education. There’s some in the district, he acknowledged, but he’s been told that 80 percent of students won’t go to college. Which, Tapley said, means a lot more students could benefit if they were able to leave high school with a professional certificate or two.

“The classes should be there for the people that want to go to college, but opportunities should also be there for the children that want to take good-paying local jobs,” Tapley said.

In his own career, he said, he’s been everything from a sheetrocker to a carpenter to an automotive mechanic. He didn’t find his niche, Tapley said, until he became a heavy equipment mechanic.

“Mechanicing is kind of easy. It kind of comes to me,” he said. “That’s why I pursued it as a career and I got a good pension out of it.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.