• Age on Oct. 4, 2022

    71

  • Family (immediate/those you live with)

    Stephen Sorensen, spouse

  • Occupation

    Retired teacher

  • Previous government experience or community involvement

    Teacher, Parent, parent/staff member of PTO’s, Site Councils, Student Activities support groups, School Board member

  • Highest level of education

    M.S.

  • Did you attend public school?

    Yes

  • Do you support ballot proposition 3?

    Yes

  • Why are you running for re-election?

    I’m running for the board because I feel like my personal mission, when I ran for the board the last time, was to really work on improving the quality of the reading program for children learning to read in general. And I feel like we’re about halfway through that mission, and the pandemic really didn’t help us accelerate it. But I feel like we are moving in a very good direction. We are changing up the methodologies that are being used in the classroom. And as someone who taught hundreds of children to read, I feel like my position on the board is important for helping us continue to move in the right direction.

    Compare candidates' answers

  • What are you most proud of from your current term?

    I think that we worked hard to keep students and family safe in Juneau during the pandemic. Our decisions weren’t always popular, but I do believe that the entire board and the administration worked to move in ways that were in the best interests of the community and our staff and our students.

    Compare candidates' answers

  • What do you hope to accomplish in your next term?

    I would hope that we are able to gear back up and continue moving towards better outcomes for reading. And also, we’ve used some of our pandemic relief monies to help upgrade social and emotional learning staff — not upgrade, but increase social and emotional learning staff to really help students who lost a lot of opportunity to develop, you know, those groups social skills that are so important in real life, both in school and in the workplace. And while children lost ground in academics, they also lost ground in a lot of the social learning aspects that you need, you know, like a group to kind of develop.

    Compare candidates' answers