The Sitka School Board is back to full capacity. When the board met on Tuesday (6-30-26), two new members were sworn in to fill vacant seats.
Kat Richards and Matthew Potter were the only applicants for two Sitka School Board seats that opened in May, when former board members Amanda Williams and Tom Williams stepped down [link]. After a month-long application period, the board announced Richards’ and Potters’ candidacy on June 23, giving the public a week to weigh in on their potential appointments.
At a special meeting on June 30, the board interviewed them both. Richards works in healthcare and owns her own business. She recently accepted a job with the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium as a nurse educator, leaving her job as the district’s school nurse. She said her experience in that role familiarized her with the school’s challenges, and would inform her work on the board. And it’s not the first time she’s sought a seat, and she’s looking to get involved.
“This is definitely community focused. I mean, there’s not much more community focused than with our youth, and so I think that is really why I’m doing it,” Richards told the board.
Potter is an educator and administrator who has worked in Sitka and schools around the state. He said he and his family are moving back to Sitka this summer.
“I think that will kind of…help me be able to have a different perspective,” he said of his experience in education. “But like I said, it really, it all comes down to, I want my kids to have the best school, the best district possible.”
When asked what he’d like to change about the district, Potter said he’d like to see a “coherent overall plan” and communicate that plan with the community.
“I don’t think that we’re just going to see the increases of, you know, 20 or 30 or 40% in our school district budgets coming in anytime soon. So kind of acknowledging that this is the new normal, and figuring out how we can work within it,” he said. “But have a plan, knowing that this is what it’s going to look like for the foreseeable future.”
Richards also said she thinks the board could work on its action planning for the future, but values its transparency.
“I really feel that the community members, the students…that they have a say in it,” she said. “They have the ability to reach out and be part of the process, and I think that’s a very big strength.”
After interviewing the candidates, the board voted unanimously to appoint them to the vacant seats. Both candidates were sworn in over Zoom. They will serve on the board until the municipal election in October.
