Incumbent Sitka school board president Amy Morrison is running for reelection this fall.
Although she’s got just one term under her belt, she’s got more seniority than everyone else on the board, except for outgoing member Eric Van Cise.
Morrison says she decided to run again to smooth the transition to new leadership in the district administration.
“In my time on the board, we’ve had now three superintendents in three years,” Morrison said. “So I just wanted some continuity for our new superintendent.”
Morrison thinks the hiring of former Service High School principal Frank Hauser to lead the district as superintendent was the most significant undertaking of the school board over the past year.
“Our biggest task, and also I feel our biggest accomplishment,” said Morrison, of the hiring of new superintendent Frank Hauser. “I’m really proud of how we handled the selection process — the whole process from the beginning, I felt we were really transparent and involved the community as much as we could.”
Compared to the superintendent hire, Morrison says running the district during the pandemic was “a distant second” in the board’s list of challenges last year. She credits that success to the leadership of interim superintendent John Holst.
Moving forward, Morrison would like to continue to grow the relationships that were established during the difficult year just past.
“Hopefully, we built a lot of trust in the community between the school district and families,” she said. “I feel we’ve made a lot of strides in better communication with staff in the district also, so I would like to continue that.”
Morrison is an insurance agent in Sitka. Two of her daughters will be seniors at Sitka High this coming year. Her eldest daughter graduated three years ago.
Morrison is unchallenged for her seat on the board in the coming election, and for a while it looked like there might not be anyone on the ballot for the other open seat on the board being vacated by Eric Van Cise.
Morrison convinced her next-door neighbor, Todd Gebler, to take the plunge.
“Yeah, I had gone over to his house to ask him to sign my petition, because I have to get signatures to run again,” said Morrison, “and we struck up a conversation, and he expressed an interest, and I encouraged him to run.”
Amy Morrison and Todd Gebler are the only two candidates for the two open seats on the Sitka School Board whose names will appear on the ballot. There are three candidates for two open seats on the Sitka Assembly. The municipal election will take place on Tuesday, October 5.
KCAW’s Municipal Election Hub will go live in September. The hub will feature biographical information about all the candidates for municipal office, as well as their positions on major issues, in their own words.
