The Juneau candidate for the Wrangell schools superintendent job dropped out, leaving a field of three to meet the community in a Zoom event last week.
The school board is scheduled to interview the finalists Friday.
The three finalists are: Joseph Aldridge, superintendent of the Columbia Union School District, in Central California; Bill Burr, assistant superintendent of the Delta Junction/Greely School District, east of Fairbanks; and Ralph Watkins, superintendent and principal of Hoonah City Schools.
Tim Bauer, of the Juneau School District, withdrew his application from consideration.
The Wrangell School District will accept community comments on the candidates until midnight Thursday, before it starts its interviews the next day.
Aldridge has been superintendent of the 500-student California district since 2017. Burr has served as assistant superintendent at the 800-student Delta/Greely School District since 2014. Watkins has served as superintendent and principal of the 120-student Hoonah City Schools since 2016.
The Feb. 25 public forum was moderated by Tiffany Jackson, with the Association of Alaska School Boards, which is helping Wrangell School District find a new superintendent to take over for Debbie Lancaster, whose resignation will take effect June 30.
During the Zoom event, Jackson asked each candidate about their careers and leadership styles.
All three agreed that extracurricular activities are an integral part of the district's and students' well-being. They all also agreed that community partnerships are vital for providing opportunities for students.
Aldridge said state data shows that Wrangell has high-achieving students, but one area that he thinks could be improved is consistency from level to level. As superintendent, his first year would be mainly focused on learning the strengths of the schools and the teachers, and figuring out how to use said strengths more consistently.
"How can we connect our teachers who are having great successes with students with teachers who are maybe having a little bit more trouble with that particular aspect of things?" Aldridge said. "What's going well, and how can we use the strengths of those teachers to really bring all of our students up, and all of our schools up?"
Watkins agreed that the data for Wrangell looks good. He attributed this to the longevity of the district's teaching staff. However, he said there are some areas that need growth. One such area he said was career and technical education.
Looking at graduation requirements, he noticed there is a one-credit requirement for career and technical education (CTE) or voc-ed. "Can we grow that?" Watkins asked. "As we look at job-ready skills, are we preparing our kids?"
Burr said attendance is a bright spot for Wrangell. A 95% attendance rate is "spectacular," he said. Graduation rates are also a good area. The goal should be high graduation rates, high test scores, and successful programs, but he cautioned that high scores are not everything. His priority would be to keep building on previous success.
"Years ago, I had a principal say, 'Our scores are really high, and this is good enough,'" Burr said. "It's haunted me a little bit, because what is 'good enough' in education? ... Wrangell has a great foundation in CTE, in education, in graduation, all of that is wonderful. That first year [if hired] is finding out how that has been accomplished and how to move it forward."
Watkins said he would handle the budget in close collaboration with the school board, through numerous workshops. A focus on the district's overall strategic plan would also be important. The strategic plan is put together by all the community stakeholders, he said, so they need to use that as a guide when determining where money needs to go.
"Those choices should be reflective of what is going to support student achievement, is going to support student growth, staff retention, those things are important," Watkins said.
Burr said declining budgets are a problem for communities and organizations across the state, not just for school districts. Stakeholder input and transparency would be his priorities for making budget assessments, he said, bringing everyone together.
"That means the City and Borough Assembly, that means the community, that means the canneries, that means everybody who's working for the benefit of the students and the community itself," Burr said. "We're going to have to make some cuts, but those cuts need to be shared with everybody involved. There has to be buy-in, and there has to be understanding."
Aldridge said he began his career in school administration in 2009, during the Great Recession. He was able to keep programs going through "honest conversations" about what their goals were for education. Part of those conversations, he said, included tying dollar amounts to a district's overall strategic plan.
"You know how much you're looking at for each action as you move all the way through, and it's very specific and very transparent for the community to see," Aldridge said. "I think if we take a look at things and we work hard as a staff, we work hard with our community, and we work hard with our board to figure out what are the core programs we must keep, and those are non-negotiable. ... Then we go out in layers from there."
A full recording of the candidate forum can be found at https://vimeo.com/517249014/4f11b5df79. More information on the candidates, their backgrounds, and a place for the
district stakeholders to leave input can be found at https://forms.gle/RNPTfiCVG5cYzKXn8.
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