School board opposes changes

PALMER — A plan to change the way Mat-Su Borough School District School Board members are elected drew opposition Thursday evening from the people who hold those seats.

“Basically, the concerns that were shared by all of us were that this is probably not in the best interest of children because we don’t want members of the school board to go against each other fighting for resources,” said school board vice president Erick Cordero.

Currently, school board members are elected at-large, which means every borough voter can vote for every seat. By contrast, the borough assembly elects its members by district and each assembly member represents just that region.

The plan, proposed by Mat-Su Borough Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine, would change the election structure so that each school board seat is assigned to an assembly district whose voters would then choose a corresponding school board member.

“It is not that they represent a district, they are just elected by district. They will represent the whole (borough),” she wrote in an email about the proposal.

The plan is structured so that the districting would be phased in, she said. The seats would be at-large until current school board members’ terms expire. Since school board terms are staggered, one or two seats each year would change from at-large to by-district elections.

The school board voted unanimously to oppose Bettine’s idea on Thursday.

It’s an issue that will likely stay alive through the fall, since the change has to go before the voters before it can be implemented. At its Tuesday meeting, the assembly is set to vote on whether to include the measure on October’s ballot.

Proponents of the measure point say school board members are currently stretched very thin, representing 44 schools spread across more than 24,000 square miles — from Glacier View to Talkeetna and everywhere in between.

They also point out that at-large representation leads to a situation in which a lot of school board members live in the concentrated, urban core area of the borough. Bettine has said previously that the public would be better served if each district had a school board member.

Cordero made an argument, though, that geography is a complicated topic where schools are concerned. As in most places, the Mat-Su Borough divides students into geographic areas. Wasilla High School serves Wasilla students; kids who live in Meadow Lakes and Houston attend Houston High School.

But in the Valley, there are other kinds of schools, alternative schools like the Career and Technical High School and Burchell High School, and charter schools like Academy Charter School. There are also a lot of exemptions given to students who want to go to school somewhere other than the one assigned by their geographic boundaries. All of those alternative schools and exemptions add up.

“About 30 percent of our students don’t go to school within their districts,” Cordero said.

If the school board were divided into districts, he asked, which school board member would represent those alternative schools?

He acknowledged that changing the election structure would make the school board similar, at least in one way, to the assembly. But, he said, the school board is a different body with different priorities. He said the current at-large structure works fine.

“I don’t know whether there is a problem that needs to be fixed or if it is a perception of things,” Cordero said. “The kids are the priority and we don’t look to see whether the kids are from Meadow Lakes or Wasilla.”

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