School district names superintendent finalists

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough School District announced today a list of five finalists to take over after Superintendent George Troxel retires at the end of the school year.

In alphabetical order they are:

• Deborah Sue Akers: Superintendent of Mercer County Schools in Princeton, W.V. Akers has been an administrator since 1984 and has been a teacher and adjunct college professor.

• Kenneth Stephen Burnley: a senior resident fellow at the University of Michigan working on an interventional model for struggling middle schoolers. He is a former superintendent of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, Colorado Springs School District Eleven and Detroit Public Schools.

• Deena M. Paramo: one of the district's assistant superintendents, whose position is one rung below Troxel's. She has been a principal at Cottonwood Creek, a teacher and an adjunct professor of education at UAA.

• Carolyn S. Ross: superintendent of Churchill County School District in Fallon, Nev. Her resume includes stints as a teacher and principal and two prior tenures as superintendent in Nevada.

• Gregory E. Strong: currently a businessman developing parks and subdivisions. Strong has been associate superintendent of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and South Bend (Indiana) Community School Corporation, as well as borough manager of the Fairbanks North Star Borough.