Frances Klein has filed to run for a three-year term on the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School Board. There are two seats up for grabs in the upcoming municipal election and four candidates are running.
School board members are responsible for overseeing the district’s budget, adopting policies and approving staff contracts.
KRBD’s Hunter Morrison spoke with Klein about her goals and priorities if elected to office.
Hunter Morrison: Why are you running?
Frances Klein: I am running because, as of the middle of the month [August], no one was, and so as I was looking at just the fact that there really wasn’t anybody running for two open seats. And thinking about the experience that I have with education and the potential that I see in our district, I figured that if I had the time and availability and the skills that I should step up and make use of those.
Morrison: And could you elaborate on why you’re running a little more?
Klein: Yeah, so I have a background in education. I’ve been a teacher and working in education for over 15 years at this point. And as I look at the makeup and background and experience of the current school board, I see people with a lot of great business experience and community leadership experience. But I think that one of the areas where we could use some additional background is in actual working in education, being a teacher, being in the classroom, so that as the board is talking about policy and talking about the things that affect their employees, the teachers, the paraprofessionals, that there is able to be a voice there saying this is how these policies will affect the board’s employees. Technically, the board has one employee, the superintendent, but the district employs a lot of people in our community, and I think we could have a benefit from having someone who can speak to the experience of being a teacher in the district.
Morrison: If you’re elected, what is something that you would like to do on the school board?
Klein: I think obviously the biggest concern currently for the district is financial stability, and we have had a tough few years with having to make cuts. I was one of the 70 teachers cut in the last round of cuts due to budget, right? And that was tough for the district. It was tough for the people that were cut. It’s going to be really tough on the kids coming up this year with bigger class sizes, different schools. And if we want to have the school district recover and provide quality education, we need a stable budget. And there’s not an easy fix to that, and it’s not going to be, unfortunately, probably not a next year fix. But I think there are things that can happen with the budget that would allow a recovery process to start, so that we can start stabilizing the budget, stabilizing the district, and then looking towards positive growth.
Morrison: What leadership roles or community engagement roles makes you equipped for this role?
Klein: So I think some of the other candidates running have a lot of really great backgrounds in like board memberships, community leadership roles. I don’t have those experiences, but I have a lot of experience working in schools, knowing how schools function or can function, a lot of background in understanding what the legal requirements are, right? And so being able to speak to, as a member of the board, hear the things that we need to do in order to ensure that our schools are meeting their legal requirements for kids, and then I think as well that ability to speak to the policies and influence policies that will make the school district a good employer and a place that people want to work.
Morrison: What is something that you would like listeners to know about you?
Klein: So, I’m a graduate of the Ketchikan School District. I was the class of 2007 at Kayhi. I was in whatever the last class was at Schoenbar before they tore it up and remodeled. I went to White Cliff, and I went into education because I was really lucky to go to school here, and I was lucky to have great teachers. And so I have seen the best that this district can offer. I know how good it can be. I had great experiences in music and in sports, and Ketchikan is a great place to grow up, and it’s a great place to go to school. It has been a great place to go to school, and I would really like for it to go back to being a great place to go to school. I think we’ve got a community of really active, interested, engaged parents, and really fun kids. My son’s in second grade, and so I spend a lot of time at the baseball field. I spend a lot of time at the rec center. I work currently with Resilient Youth and Community, and so I spend a lot of time with high school kids, seeing all the cool things that they’re doing. This community, you know, has a lot to offer, and it would be great to have a school district that is able to give as much back.
Hunter Morrison is a Report for America corps member for KRBD. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.
