School Board Candidates
Photo by Roman Mager
Allison Sayer - CRR Staff
This year’s school board election ballots were mailed on September 12. They must be postmarked by October 4.
Anna Bell-Hand is challenging incumbent Mark Somerville for his seat on the school board. President Joshua Scott is running unopposed for his seat. The other seats on the board are not up for re-election during this cycle.
The Copper River Record does not endorse either candidate over the other. I decided by coin toss which candidate to discuss first in this article.
Anna Bell-Hand said her main inspiration for running for School Board was addressing dropout rates.
“I believe we need to hear from our kids about why we are starting to have a dropout,” she said. “For a while we had 30 or more kids graduating. It’s starting to be a lower count again. What happened?”
Bell-Hand would like the board to try to hear directly from the kids about this issue, whether in person or in writing. She also wonders whether the area villages can “pull something together” to try to help.
Bell-Hand’s past board and leadership experience includes serving as vice president, secretary, and treasurer on the Kluti-Kaah Village Council and past membership on the CRNA board. She was also president of the Copper Valley School Parent Teacher Organization.
On the subject of the local villages, Hand feels that there could be more outreach and communication between the district and the villages. She would hope to facilitate that if elected.
Bell-Hand also said she “would like to see lunch programs in all the schools or some sort of food that’s available to the kids. I’m going to push for it.”
Hand stated that she does not have any issue with Somerville in particular as a board member.
“It’s just that we don’t hear from the board in the community,” she said, “Only when big things happen, like when they were looking for a superintendent. I’ve asked the superintendent several times to be involved with the community, go to the village council meetings, go see them, but it never did happen.”
Finally, Hand said she would like to thank everyone who already voted in this election.
Somerville would like to remain on the board because “it has a real impact on the community, the state, the world basically because it deals with getting the kids educated.” He added it is the most satisfying board work he has done because he believes in its importance.
Somerville has served on the CRSD school board for nine years. His professional experience includes 20 years at Prince William Sound Aquaculture and his current position as the Sport Fish Area Management Biologist at ADF&G. He added that his three children graduated from Kenny Lake School.
On what he feels the district has been doing well, Somerville said, “The school district has been great at trying to be on the forefront of education, making sure we have everything teachers need to get everything out to students. It’s a different world from when I went to school and all the content came from the teacher. The challenge now is getting the content into context.”
The school board is currently involved in the superintendent search. Looking further, Somerville said the schools should work towards “competency informed by standards” rather than grades. He is also excited about the state’s new reading goals.
“Kids learn so many ways,” Somerville said. ”Making their education more hands-on, applicable, and engaging is going to be the challenge in the future.” He added, “The big challenge is getting the kids engaged and getting them to understand it’s not only relevant, it’s important.”
I asked Somerville if there was anything he would have done differently, looking back on his time on the board. He admitted there have been some curriculum changes that did not work well in practice, “Everyone remembers the ingenuity debacle,” he said. He also said that TREKS and basecamp have “lost a little direction,” but that he still favors the program overall, and would like to see it improve and continue.
I’d like to apologize for being a bit late to interview these candidates, but encourage everyone who has not already sent in their ballot to do so by October 4.