“I’m back.” That’s how NBA legend Michael Jordan announced his return to basketball. A Sitka School Board candidate will take a page from that same book on election day (10-7-14) when voters see the name Tom Conley on the municipal ballot.
The 13-year school board veteran is making a comeback to fill one of two open seats. Although he has no opponent, Tom Conley is not taking the election lightly: The school district is facing major challenges, and so is the candidate.
Tom Conley served on the Sitka School Board from 1999 to 2012. Prior to that, he served two terms on the Ketchikan School Board.
His own daughter graduated eleven years ago. He’s been following school politics since his retirement — it’s in his nature to want to become involved again.
“By the same token, I’m a pediatrician, so I’ve spent a lot of time with children, and have a fair amount of experience dealing with children’s problems. It seemed a natural in that sense.”
Conley practiced medicine for 42 years, and retired recently from the Public Health Service in Sitka. He’s always been thoughtful and somewhat reserved, but it’s clear that the seventy-year-old is not having an easy retirement.
“My health in general is okay on a day-to-day basis. But I’ve developed Parkinson’s Disease over the last year — well, probably the last five years — but the last year more noticeable, and especially more noticeable in the last six months.”
But as we turn to issues facing the district, it’s clear that Conley is still focused, still looking for answers. He carries a spreadsheet detailing what he believes are shortfalls in state funding for schools. He thinks Alaskan communities became too dependent on the state for cash following the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
“We probably went wild in the seventies when it first came on, and we were spending very profligately. Things have cut back; people are being a bit more careful about what’s going on, but there’s been no change in the system.”
In other parts of the country, Conley says, communities have structured property taxes or sales taxes that fund schools. Sometimes sin taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. He admits taxation is not popular, but worth exploring.
“There are undoubtedly other things that could be done.”
When he served on the board in 2009, Conley supported an effort to spend almost $900,000 in unrestricted federal stimulus funds on technology in the district, including a new computer “backbone” linking schools.
But Conley doesn’t support trading technology for teachers.
“I think it would be important to stress at the outset that the key element in an educational system in a community is going to be the quality of the teachers. And their willingness to put in the time and the effort and the expertise. That is way more important than anything that has to do with technological innovation.”
Although his email address actually contains the word “luddite,” Conley is not against placing technology in the classroom. While he’s concerned about the short shelf-life of some devices, he wants to ensure that Sitka students are ready for the world.
“We don’t know what’s coming down the road, but it’s certainly not going to be pen and pencil. And I think that we do our children a disservice if we don’t begin to prepare them to enter the digital age.”
A major concern of the district in the coming year is meeting new education standards. The administration has budgeted around $1.7-million to purchase new teaching materials for Alaska’s version of the Common Core — and there’s no obvious source for that much money in the district budget. But a caller to KCAW’s school board candidate forum last week (9-30-14) had a suggestion: Many teachers like the new standards and have already designed curricula. Why not pay them to formalize their lessons?
“I think you’d probably end up with a better product. I’ve been really happy with what my kids have been doing with English Language Arts, and I can’t see where buying something from a big company would be an improvement.”
Math, Science, and Social Studies are the next subject areas transitioning to new standards. Conley thought the idea had merit, if the state Department of Education allowed it.
“If indeed developing it locally would meet the standards, I see no objection to it. But I don’t know how much leeway we have.”
One place the district will not have much leeway is if the US Department of Education were to launch a full-blown Title IX investigation. The department’s Office of Civil Rights informed the district over the summer that it had received a gender equity complaint regarding Sitka’s new multi-million dollar baseball field.
Conley wasn’t on the board when that problem developed, but he will be there to help solve it. His first suggestion: Settle down.
“We need to continue to talk to each other without getting hysterical about the issue.”
It’s become harder to imagine Conley getting hysterical about anything. His energy is down. The work of campaigning appears to take some effort. I asked him to consider what he would say — as a physician — to Tom Conley the candidate and future school board member.
“It’s going to be a little more difficult managing the time than it was in the past. But I think I can do it, and I think it’ll be okay.”
On the upside, while Conley was practicing medicine during all his previous school board terms in Sitka and Ketchikan, he’s now retired. If things take more time, Conley says he has the time to give.
