Ketchikan Borough Election
OCTOBER 03, 2017

Glenn Brown

Candidate for the Ketchikan School Board
1 Year Term - 1 Seat Open

Filed for Office: August 25, 2017
Statement Received September 27, 2017
Published September 27, 2017

My name is Glenn Brown and I am a candidate for reelection to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School Board. I am the father of five children, the youngest of whom is a junior at Ketchikan High School. We moved to Ketchikan a little more than six years ago in hopes of living a quieter, slower-paced life. We were delighted to find our new hometown to be a vibrant community with lots to offer in the way of recreation and entertainment, beautiful surroundings, and great people. I now wish we had become a part of Ketchikan many years sooner. It’s a great small town.

But small towns don’t function without everyone ‘putting a shoulder to the wheel’ and school board service is another way I can meaningfully contribute to our community. Having served on an elected school board in our former hometown, and in my current service as member on the KGBSD school board, I believe bring that experience, sound reasoning and good judgment to the tough decisions that our school district must make. All school boards deal with an essential problem: How to best apply limited tax dollars to a wide range of academic needs? Our responsibility to be good financial stewards of the taxpayer’s dollars is significant in these times of ever-tightening budgets. Meanwhile, we are elected to serve as educational leaders of the community and boosters of a comprehensive academic program. I believe that I have, as an incumbent school board member, positively contributed during my term to the decision-making process as we have made those balanced decisions.

I ran for my first term on the school board in 2014 on three issues:

1. Work to improve the fractured relationship between the school board and the borough assembly. I have served on the School Board-Assembly Liaison Committee for two of the last three years and our working relationship with the borough assembly has made great gains through the combined efforts of all involved.

2. Be a good fiscal steward of the school district, ever-mindful that taxpayer fund every bit of the school district’s activities. We have had no property tax increase in the last three years and school district’s expenditures are actually slightly down from last year’s budget. We have focused on budget cuts that will least impact our district’s kids and their education.

3. Expand vocational/technical training opportunities for our Kayhi and Revilla students. This priority was driven by the concern that were were under-serving the roughly 40% of Ketchikan graduates who will NOT go off to a four-year college. In today’s economy, school districts must prepare students to seek and secure jobs with livable wages. Preparation and readiness for college is important for some students, but it is equally important that our graduates finish high school prepared to enter the workforce with the skills in demand in our community. We have made meaningful changes in the last three years to expand vo-tech classes options, to get kid’s certifications upon completing classwork, and we have recently obtained a fishing permit for the district’s training vessel, the Jack Cotant which will allow student’s to log real sea time of a working fishing vessel.

I have focused on the issues I committed to work on when I ran in 2014. I commit to continue this work, and I humbly request your support and your vote on October 3rd.

Respectfully yours,

Glenn Brown

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