My name is Stephen Courtright and I’m a volunteer for the Recall Dunleavy effort. Our effort first came together over actions taken by Gov. Mike Dunleavy that violated the Alaska Constitution and failed to follow state law. Tens of thousands of Alaskans have joined this movement because they love Alaska and want to see this governor held accountable.

Since last summer, the Recall Dunleavy movement has been incredible, collecting an historic number of signatures in  record-breaking time for the recall application, back in the fall of 2019. Signature-gathering for the petition — the second round of signatures needed to put the recall on the ballot — was just getting started earlier this spring when COVID-19 hit the United States and put a stop to all meetings, including those aimed at getting signatures.

The good news is that most people who signed in Round 1 have come back out to sign in Round 2. However, some haven’t yet, and the number of signatures needed from registered voters is much higher in this round. In order to give folks a chance to sign, recall organizers have planned a drive-thru event Saturday, June 13, at the Hames Center parking lot. Any Alaska voter who has yet to sign can drive up between noon-2 P.M. and volunteers will assist with no-contact petition signing. Anyone wishing to know more about this effort should contact Jeff Budd at 747-4821. We look forward to seeing you on the 13th.

I’m Stephen Courtright. Thank you for your time and consideration.

The Sitka School District’s financial picture was brighter under the sunny skies of last spring. A larger-than-expected enrollment drop this fall will cost the district $100,000 in state funding — a deficit that the school board will address in January. (KCAW file photo)

After an unanticipated enrollment drop this school year, the Sitka School Board will be forced to make a significant budget adjustment in January.

District superintendent Mary Wegner told the school board at its regular December meeting (12-5-18), that the latest dip in enrollment coincided with the arrival of the Permanent Fund Dividend.

“We have seen an exodus since the PFD checks have come out,” Wegner said. “We are currently at 1204.5. It’s not uncommon to see that exodus and it usually balances out a little bit.”

1,204 students is 49 fewer than were in school in Sitka last April, and 38 fewer than the district’s projections.

The Sitka School District — like all schools in Alaska — bases its budget for the school year on the number of students it anticipates will be enrolled during a ten-day period in October. If a district’s actual census comes in higher than anticipated, the state contributes an additional amount of money.

If a district’s census is lower than estimated, it’s going to have a budget shortfall.
Superintendent Wegner outlined the scale of the problem.

The decreased enrollment from what was projected (38 students) equates to about $400,000. Now, we have two mitigating factors that will help with that: One of them is that students who qualify as intensive/special education services count as 13 students. They have extra needs — we have to hire extra staff to work with those students — but it does increase our revenues. And that brings it down to about $250,000 that we’re short. The other mitigating factor is that after our budget passed (in spring 2018) the state did a one-time fee based on our enrollment. We don’t know what that number is until the enrollment gets certified, which just happened. So we haven’t yet seen what amount that number will be. Then we have to take off the additional staff that we had to hire to support intensive students. So I would expect to see something of about a $100,000 deficit that we’ll have to present in a budget to fix this school year.

The “one-time fee” from the state Wegner refers to is a special $20-million appropriation passed by the legislature last March, to be divided among the state’s 53 school districts on a per-student basis.

The Sitka School Board is scheduled to address the current budget problem in January — at a time when it usually begins to look ahead to next year’s budget. In fact, advocacy groups were already bringing their concerns to the board at its December meeting.

This is Stephen Courtright, one of 46 members of a group called “Families for School Libraries,” who are pushing to restore the librarian position at Blatchley Middle School, which was cut last year.

“As a group we want to work with the school board, we don’t want to work in opposition. That doesn’t serve anybody. We just want to let you know that we exist, that we want to advocate with you guys, we want to advocate at the City & Borough meetings, we want to advocate at the legislative level, even.”

Group organizer Beth Short-Rhoads submitted a packet of about 50 letters written in support of restoring the Blatchley. She told the board that she had submitted the same material to Sitka Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, whom she said had agreed to co-sponsor legislation increasing school funding next year.

The Sitka School District will be on Winter Break from Monday, December 24 to Thursday, January 10 — except for teachers, who will return on Monday, January 7, for three days of training and professional development.

Darius Harried, Naomi Reese, Jacob Mahoney, and Jeffrey Moore pose with their medals after performing in the final concert. (Stephen Courtright/Mt. Edgecumbe)

Downloadable audio.

Jacob Mahoney (Bass II, senior) and Darius Harried (Tenor II, sophomore) are two students from Mt. Edgecumbe that took part in the Southeast Alaska Honor Music Festival this year. A record four students from Mt. Edgecumbe were selected this year, including the school’s first female attendee, Naomi Reese (Soprano I, junior). Jeffrey Moore (French horn, senior) was also selected.

Stephen Courtright, director of the music department, explained the tough competition to gain entry to the Honor Festival and putting together the festival’s first strings ensemble.

Held this year at Thunder Mountain High School in Juneau, the Honor Festival has existed for forty years.

Lon Garrison and Stephen Courtright in the KCAW studios on Wednesday. (KCAW photo/Ed Ronco)

The pair answered questions from the public in a live candidate forum Wednesday evening (9-25-13).

Listen to iFriendly audio.

When he talks about the race, Lon Garrison makes it plain that now is not the time to bring in a new face to the board.

“Public education is under attack. There are a lot of people criticizing public education, and who would like to see some major changes happen. I think it’s really important that we have advocates who stand up for what public education means. And that also means standing up for the public process and understanding what it means to be a good school board member. And that doesn’t happen overnight.”

Stephen Courtright says this election is not about replacing anyone, but is instead about bringing in a perspective that is absent from the board.

“I come from a position where I believe that education policy needs to have the voice of professional educators involved. And that has been neglected for far too long at all levels.”

In some school board races around the country there are larger principles at stake, like whether to open charter schools, or to distribute public education funding to private institutions through a voucher system.

Garrison and Courtright are aligned on the purpose of public education, and its value. How you get there in the larger world of legislative politics might be a difference. A listener emailed a question to the forum about how the school board could offset some of the “negative pressure” on school funding in the legislature.

Courtright thinks that patience may not always be the best approach to politics.

“It is tough, and there is no easy — well, there is an easy answer. And that’s to kick down every door in Juneau until we get what we need. But, unfortunately the road to that answer is not as easy as it needs to be.”

Garrison has met face-to-face with legislators who are openly hostile to the idea of public schools. He looks for smaller victories.

“I try to present both what we’re doing well, and what we need to do and where we need to go, and how they can help us. What are the items that they can really work toward providing some solutions for. Rather than go in and be argumentative and try to convince them that they’re entirely wrong. I want to show them a way they can be right. A way they can be a part of the solution.”

Read a candidate statement by Long Garrison.
Read a candidate statement by Stephen Courtright.

Questions posed by listeners to the forum came in mostly through social media and email, and covered a spectrum of issues, like how to better celebrate the achievements of students, the role of the Tribe in district affairs, whether the district should provide internet access for students who don’t already have it at home, and how to better fund activities so kids don’t have to go door-to-door selling stuff.

Some questions were technical, like the one posed by the forum’s lone caller.

“How do you feel about adopting the common-core standards?”

The candidates were not far apart here, at least in their initial reactions.

Courtright – It’s an elephant in the room.
Garrison – Well, it’s a real conundrum.

But this issue did create some space between the candidates. Courtright views the new state standards through the lens of a teacher.

“It’s going to change the landscape. If I had been asked, I would have said that national standards were a great idea. But I don’t know that these are, because they haven’t been tested yet. We’re field testing them now as they go live. And we’re doing things like taking Algebra from high school and putting it in eighth grade. That might turn out to be a great thing for our country. It might not, and that’s what we don’t know.”

Garrison approached the issue from the perspective of accountability. He said there’s about 85-percent overlap between Common Core and the new Alaska Standards. The changes in curriculum, testing, and evaluations will be implemented over the next two years.

“Is the Department of Education using it as a tool or a bat, so to speak, to get us to do what they want us to? I think at times, yes. And that doesn’t feel good. That’s a real concern I have about the Common Core.”

But neither Garrison or Courtright talked about standardized tests as the real measure of student achievement. When they talk about who the district serves and what they consider the measure of success to be, some of the candidate’s differences in opinion disappear, if not their differences in style.

Courtright – Sitka’s a weird little town. I love a weird little town. And weird little towns are really good at standing up against the big guy and saying, You know what? We don’t really care. We’re happy to be different, and we don’t mind being evaluated that way. As long as we know internally that we’re doing what we want to do.

Lon Garrison – I think one of the things you have to do is communicate the success that the district has, and tell our story. So that people understand who we are, what we’re doing, and the good work we’re doing.

The municipal election is Tuesday, October 1. The winning school board candidate will serve a three-year term.

Listen to the entire candidate forum, Part 1.
Listen to the entire candidate forum, Part 2.

Stephen Courtright teaches music at the state-run boarding school. He says helping make policy for local schools is a way to contribute to the community, and bring in a teacher’s perspective.

Listen to iFriendly audio.

Additional municipal election coverage on Raven Radio:

LIVE candidate call-in forums on Raven Radio:
School Board – Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Assembly – Thursday, September 26, 2013.

No one twisted Stephen Courtright’s arm to make him run for school board. And it’s not about grinding an axe over one school policy or another.

“This is mostly a matter of walking the talk.”

Like many candidates, the 31-year-old teacher and part-time bartender simply decided to turn thought into action.

“I’m one of those people who frequently says, Somebody should be doing this. I think somebody should be representing this, or speaking out about these issues. And there came a point when I realized that somebody might be me.”

That Courtright teaches at Mt. Edgecumbe adds another dimension to his campaign. The boarding school is run by the state Department of Education, and not the local school board. He jokes that he has many friends who work for Sitka’s public schools, and that he wouldn’t mind setting policy for them. But those policies would not apply to him.

Courtright says it’s his work — rather than his workplace — that voters should consider.

“There are things that I would like to see happen at Mt. Edgecumbe, that I don’t have the power to make happen. But that’s neither here nor there when it comes to the Sitka School District. I believe that it’s every member of the community’s responsibility to ensure that the public schools stay at the highest caliber possible. And I do believe that, as a professional educator — someone who’s trained to know what’s happening in the classroom — I have a unique perspective that currently isn’t represented on the board.”

Courtright has two young children, ages 4 and 7, just beginning their school careers. As all parents of children farther along in the system know, a free public education begins to cost more and more, as students become involved in activities.

The policy in Sitka has been to educate the whole child. Even faced with declining enrollment and shrinking budget, Sitka Schools have parted with few activities programs — and even added some. Courtright questions this approach.

“It seems to me that if you’ve got difficulty making ends meet, spreading thinner isn’t always the best solution.”

Two of the most recent programs adopted by the district are high school soccer and football. Courtright calls them “high ticket” but doesn’t single them out as being the only expensive activities. He’s worried that a tiered system is evolving in the schools, that allows only the better-off students access to some programs.

“I think we should ensure that every student should have an opportunity. We shouldn’t be making it so that only students who can afford to, will be able to participate in varsity sports. I don’t think pay-to-play sports are the way to go. If we can’t afford for every student to participate and travel, maybe we shouldn’t have that team.”

Or, Courtright says, the schools should create a mechanism for less affluent students to participate. Possibly a funding pool, similar to the free and reduced school lunch program. His preference, though, is for full funding of whatever activities the district does offer.

And funding remains one of the district’s biggest challenges. Some key legislative assignments last year went to freshmen representatives who have questioned the public education model. Courtright says the schools still have important friends, like Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Bert Stedman who have helped organize regional political coalitions. He says Sitka’s school board should step to the plate.

“We do need to be able to play political hardball. We’re the little guys and the big guys are all coming from the railbelt now. It’s not an easy situation for us, being on an island that nobody likes to think about. The majority of them see us as this little blue outpost of cruise ship dollars, and they don’t really think of us as in need of money and help, but here we are and yes we are.”

Courtright is challenging a two-term incumbent for a seat on the board. But he’s quick to say that this election is not about removing Lon Garrison. The two are close on things like the role of public schools and educating the whole child. Their differences, so far, have to do with the role of the superintendent, and technology in schools. On this latter issue, Courtright favors more targeted purchases — like iPads — for the classrooms and teachers who want them.

The district’s recent history, though, has been to make sweeping technology purchases like Promethean Boards, and hope teachers adopt them. Courtright believes this is a symptom of top-down decision-making, and candidate like him is the cure.

“I think the biggest issue in general is that there’s too much policy being made at every level without the involvement of the people who are in the classroom.”

The municipal election is Tuesday, October 1.