Candidates Michelle O’Brien and Glenn Brown in the KRBD studio.
Michelle O’Brien and Glenn Brown were elected to the Ketchikan School Board Tuesday.
This is Brown’s first time running for local office in Ketchikan. He is filling Misty Archibald’s seat, which she decided not to run for again.
Brown says he’s ready to take on challenges facing the school district.
“Certainly the funding issue will continue to be an issue,” Brown said. “I think we’ll need to pay attention to things we talked about during the campaign including potential changes or increases in enrollment, other things that can be done on the vocational technical training side and what we can do to increase student achievement”
O’Brien is the current School Board president, she’s now re-elected to her third term. There are no term limits for School Board members.
“It’s just a real honor, it’s humbling really,” O’Brien said. “If you’re running without any competition, it’s really a referendum on what you’ve done and what folks think you have or have not accomplished”
O’Brien says she wishes there had been more than two people running for the two open seats.
“I would love to have eight or ten candidates running for School Board. Because this is our future for our community,” she said.
O’Brien and Brown both say they want to work on improving the School Board’s relationship with the Borough Assembly, which contributes funding to the school district.
“I think that’s an area that everyone recognizes we need to work on…the quality of communication that goes on between the School Board and the Borough Assembly,” Brown said.
Brown says he’ll be sworn in at a School Board work session on October 15th. The work session was organized to talk about the Safe Havens assessment of Ketchikan school safety. His first official meeting as a School Board member will be the following week on October 22nd.
Learn more about Glenn Brown and Michelle O’Brien here.
