{"id":12050,"date":"2019-08-30T16:49:21","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=12050"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:49:21","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:21","slug":"two-new-candidates-vie-for-school-board-seats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/30\/two-new-candidates-vie-for-school-board-seats\/","title":{"rendered":"Two New Candidates Vie For School Board Seats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zone 5 trustee Kevin Garrison now has a challenger<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Eric Valentine<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Zone 3 school board candidate Keith Roark. Photo credit: Keith Roark<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first goal is to bring civility and order back to the board and to take back the authority of the board,\u201d Roark said. \u201cThe trustees are in charge of the school district, not the staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s being vacated by Ryan Degn next year. The departure of Degn and Mandeville means two board-appointed\u2014as opposed to voter-elected\u2014trustees will be out in 2020. And Garrison\u2014another appointee\u2014is now being challenged.<\/p>\n

Roark\u2019s Roar<\/b><\/p>\n

So, what does Roark hope to impact? A lot, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeacher 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,\u201d Roark stated in the announcement of his candidacy.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile 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,\u201d Roark said.<\/p>\n

Stone\u2019s Pitch<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"
Zone 5 school board candidate Lara Stone. Photo credit: Lara Stone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The chief operations officer for Sun Valley Gold LLC\u2014 a local investment advisory firm\u2014and co-owner with her husband of Sun Valley Auto Club, Stone says she can bring a transparency and fiscal responsibility to the school district.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur 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\u2014and have their concerns addressed\u2014prior to implementation. My experience in business operations and finance, combined with my problem-solving skills, will provide a fresh approach to facilitating these changes,\u201d Stone said in her candidacy announcement.<\/p>\n

Stone has lived in the Wood River Valley since 1992, moving here after graduating from the University of Washington with a bachelor\u2019s 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\u2019s trustees or administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am concerned that our community\u2019s lack of faith in the school board threatens our ability to raise funds for necessary programs and to recruit good teachers,\u201d Stone said. \u201cThe first step is rebuilding public trust in the school board.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,75,18,32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"category-elections","9":"category-news","10":"category-schools"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}