Kevin Allen

Why are you running?

I am running to facilitate more communication with students, Alaska Native organizations, and the board. I also want to offer a perspective to the board that would prove helpful, a perspective of involvement in student and native organizations.

Affordable child care

Access to affordable child care is a concern for Juneau parents. Should the Juneau School District look for more ways to address the issue? If so, how? If not, why?

The district passed a resolution to acknowledge that child care in Juneau is important, but I think a partnership could be found with any aspiring organization that is looking to offer child care. If we cannot find an organization to partner with then I believe, as a person that benefited from child care as a child, then we must investigate ways to expand programs like R.A.L.L.Y. in the district to compensate the recent closure of independent child care organizations.

Improving education

How can the Juneau School District continue to improve educational opportunities for students amid continued flat funding from the state Legislature?

By strengthening our involvement with the Alaska Association of School Boards so that we know as soon as possible when funding may decrease or to advocate the increase of funding. Increasing community involvement relating to school supplies would also bring financial pressure off the district, also having the district actively seek grants to provide funding to the district would also help free up more dollars to go to student activities and opportunities.

Most pressing education issues

What do you think are the most pressing issues facing education in Juneau?

Testing is a very important issue facing the district. How we define and what we do with the test results are vital because there are some testing we do within the district that hold results that are immersible important for the district to know, but there are other tests we administer to students that give results that make keeping up with growth difficult because the scope is too large. As a former student I remember how much testing I needed to do as a sophomore in high school and sometimes it felt like there was more days spent doing special testing than time spent in the classroom. We have got to review what kind of testing that would be important to keep, and what tests we can phase out to relieve students from over-testing.