School board candidate Powers emphasizes transparency, community

Dan Powers does a little bit of everything.

In the mornings he drives the school bus. During the day he owns and operates a local tour service called Experience Wrangell. Some days he is managing his rental properties and other days he is playing gigs alongside his wife and longtime musical partner Shelley Powers.

And in the evenings, well, Powers has seven kids (and one on the way), so things can get unpredictable.

But now, he just wants to make the peace.

"I'm a peacemaker," he said before clarifying the nuance of the phrase. "A peacekeeper is someone who keeps their mouth shut to keep the peace. The peacemaker has to go directly toward confrontation in order to find resolution."

Powers decided to seek a school board seat this year after several friends encouraged him to file. He is up against incumbents Brittani Robbins and Angela Allen. The top two vote-getters in the Oct. 1 election will be elected to a three-year term.

Born in Wrangell, Powers moved back to town in 2021. Upon returning, the now 41-year-old quickly noticed some places for improvement within the functionality of the school board.

"There seems to be a gap between the community and the board," he said.

Each School Advisory Committees is supposed to serve as a bridge between the two entities. However, the community-led committees have struggled to get its voice heard in recent years, committee members said during its Sept. 9 meeting. If elected, Powers wants to explicitly outline and further expand avenues of communication between the board and its advisory committee.

His emphasis on community input is not limited to the role of the committee. When asked what he would do with a blank check made out to Wrangell schools, Powers responded promptly.

"We're elected by the people of Wrangell," he said. "They put their trust in us, so it doesn't seem appropriate to me if we told them, 'Sorry, you don't have any say in this.'"

Powers believes the school board has two key roles. The first is allowing for strong community representation; the second is to support the teachers, principals and superintendent.

"I would try to make it so that teachers and principals and administrators feel crazy supported by being here," Powers said. "I want them to be comfortable committing to live in this kind of place."

He hopes support - whether its financial or something else - can help reduce the recent high turnover among principals. Powers said there have been three secondary school principals in his three years back in town.

"With the turnover rate, it makes it so hard to keep any momentum. That's a huge deficiency."

Powers has driven the school bus for the past three years, but his commitment to Wrangell's students extends beyond the bus ride to school every morning.

"Driving the school bus, serving at the youth group, volunteering at the schools - there's a lot of young people here that probably need an advocate of some sort. And I've been getting to know them and their families."