2024 Juneau Municipal Election
Last year, the district had to solve an abrupt multimillion-dollar deficit in a matter of months. Not all residents were happy with the decisions made and it prompted a recall effort this election for two of its current members. Moving forward, what role does each school board member play in ensuring that the district remains on firm financial footing?
- What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?
- The city is asking voters to approve adding nearly $23 million to the city’s debt for public health and safety improvements. What are your thoughts on the two ballot initiatives?
- Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?
- Juneau has now experienced record-breaking glacial outburst flooding events two years in a row. What role should the city play in mitigating damage to residential property in the future?
- The city is moving forward with a redevelopment plan for the Telephone Hill neighborhood in the coming years. How should the Assembly balance the need for more affordable housing downtown with the costs the city may have to shoulder to get those requirements in place?
- What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?
- School Board
- What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau school board?
- What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the Juneau School District right now?
- Last year, the district had to solve an abrupt multimillion-dollar deficit in a matter of months. Not all residents were happy with the decisions made and it prompted a recall effort this election for two of its current members. Moving forward, what role does each school board member play in ensuring that the district remains on firm financial footing?
- The school board voted to consolidate Juneau’s high schools and middle schools this past winter. And, with the uncertainty about education funding in the state and the district’s declining enrollment, do you think more school consolidation will be necessary in the future? If so, how will you tackle that situation?
- With hundreds of more students at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé this year, issues with the lack of parking have been a hot topic. What more could the district be doing to mitigate that?
- Is student achievement where it should be in Juneau? What can the district do to improve reading and math scores as students grapple with major shifts in their school environments?
School Board
Amber Frommherz
Candidate for School Board
Moving forward, each school board member will have to get acquainted with our financial systems right away. This past school year, we, the school board and the financial officer have incorporated a new financial system and so there’s going to be a new era of reporting. And so learning what those reports are, learning the funding formula and all the channels of revenue and expenses will be everybody’s job.
Jenny Thomas
Candidate for School Board
The school board members need to be direct and communicate with the public about what’s going on. Like, I understand they say there was a multi-million dollar deficit, but it wasn’t what they said it was. I mean, that’s just flat out, they ended up ahead. So, they need to make sure that they speak their mind and ask the important questions and the questions that are coming in from the community. And the information coming in from the community, they need to address that. I mean, they need to let the public know that they’re hearing them, and by hearing them, you respond so that people are like, ‘OK, they understand what’s going on,’ rather than it falling on deaf ears, and you just think they’re doing whatever they want.
Michele Stuart Morgan
Candidate for School Board
Well, I think one would be understanding how the calculations are done. I do know that they have a new finance system. So the first thing I would like to do is get trained on that as if I was a person working there, understanding how that works, understanding how we receive our funding. Also understanding how we can get our BSA raised, you know, get more money from the legislature. I think those are some really big things that could have alleviated that and something that everyone wants to look at going forward.
Will Muldoon
Candidate for School Board
So that’s obviously our duty as fiduciaries. That is what we sign up to do. It is one of our primary responsibilities. It’s also a requirement in statute. But I’d like to take a quick moment here to address the preamble, which is in regard to the recall effort against our president and vice president. They initially tried to recall all members, except for the two newest members, and just did not have the paperwork in time. And that group is also affiliated with Community Advocates for Responsible Education, whose presiding officer is currently a candidate for school board. They are hosting a forum tonight where they did not invite the incumbents. They have a website savedjuneauschools.com where they’ve been soliciting donations since April, and look to be organizing and influencing this election, but are not in with APOC [Alaska Public Offices Commission]. So, you know, we have roles as members to handle the budget, but I am extremely worried about the way the recall group is behaving.
Jeff Redmond
Candidate for School Board
So I guess my first thing I need to say here is just that I have a lot of gratitude, and I feel like we all need to have a lot of gratitude for the people that are serving on the board. It’s not a glamorous job other than an election cycle. It’s pretty much nonexistent for most of the population in Juneau. So it’s not glamorous, and I just want to just offer my gratitude for what they’ve done now. And I disagree with the recall. I don’t necessarily agree with the policies of those individuals, but letting them fulfill their terms and letting the democratic process play out I feel is important. What can be done again is just looking forward a little bit further, but my emphasis there is just gratitude. Even if I feel like it’s time for changing the guard, I do have gratitude for what they’ve done.
Elizabeth (Ebett) Siddon
Candidate for School Board
I think of this at various levels. First, I think it is our role as board members to support the efforts of the current chief financial officer in implementing, with fidelity, our new full financial software, including relational databases, and having a really full picture of current financial status. I think it’s also about supporting the board’s Finance Committee and the work that those board members will continue doing in establishing budget reports that get brought to the board in a way that is both informative for us and for the community to understand. And then I think it’s about starting the budget process earlier so we’re not in a situation where the community feels caught off guard or rushed in engaging with us in the decisions we have to make around the budget.