Zone 5 trustee Kevin Garrison now has a challenger
By Eric Valentine
Two new candidates from two separate school district zones have entered the race for a seat on the Blaine County School District Board of Trustees, and they have one common message: Trustees need to take back their authority from a superintendent they say has taken too much of that power away.
Longtime Valley attorney and former mayor of Hailey, R. Keith Roark, has entered the Zone 3 race. Current Zone 3 trustee Ellen Mandeville has announced she would not seek re-election. And in Zone 5, financial advisor Lara Stone will be challenging incumbent Kevin Garrison.
“My first goal is to bring civility and order back to the board and to take back the authority of the board,” Roark said. “The trustees are in charge of the school district, not the staff.”
“The board has ceded its authority to the superintendent and become less responsive to the public they were elected or appointed to serve. This trend must be reversed,” Stone said.
Already, Zone 1, which represents the south Valley, has seen one person announce their candidacy. As reported, Alexis Lindberg will vie for the seat that’s being vacated by Ryan Degn next year. The departure of Degn and Mandeville means two board-appointed—as opposed to voter-elected—trustees will be out in 2020. And Garrison—another appointee—is now being challenged.
Roark’s Roar
So, what does Roark hope to impact? A lot, he says.
“Teacher morale is shockingly low, student achievement has not reached a level commensurate with district expenditures per student and communications between the board of trustees and the public have deteriorated to an alarming low,” Roark stated in the announcement of his candidacy.
Roark said his experience with government and law, specifically as mayor of Hailey from 1990 to 1994, and his role on various boards, commissions and committees at both state and local levels during his 42 years in Blaine County, makes him especially qualified to be a trustee.
“While I certainly make no claim to being a professional educator, I do come from a family of educators; my wife taught in this district for 20 years and all three of my children are graduates of Wood River High School,” Roark said.
Stone’s Pitch
The chief operations officer for Sun Valley Gold LLC— a local investment advisory firm—and co-owner with her husband of Sun Valley Auto Club, Stone says she can bring a transparency and fiscal responsibility to the school district.
“Our community wants the board to engage the public with two-way communication and provide people impacted by impending policy changes an opportunity to be heard—and have their concerns addressed—prior to implementation. My experience in business operations and finance, combined with my problem-solving skills, will provide a fresh approach to facilitating these changes,” Stone said in her candidacy announcement.
Stone has lived in the Wood River Valley since 1992, moving here after graduating from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a minor in computer science. After serving on the BCSD finance committee in 2017, she helped campaign for the school levy in March 2018 and said she heard from hundreds of residents that they no longer trusted or respected their school district’s trustees or administration.
“I am concerned that our community’s lack of faith in the school board threatens our ability to raise funds for necessary programs and to recruit good teachers,” Stone said. “The first step is rebuilding public trust in the school board.”
