Incumbent has a classroom perspective.

Mary Becker, a six-year member of the Juneau School Board who taught for 30 years, said she'll bring valuable perspective to the panel if re-elected.

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Three candidates are competing for two open seats on the School Board in the Oct. 5 election. All seats are citywide; the terms are three years.

"There are things going on in the district that are important to me and that I want to keep working on," she said.

Becker, who is a retired teacher, has been a strong supporter of building a second high school. She has served for six years on the committee of city and school district officials who planned the recent renovation of Juneau-Douglas High School and the construction of a high school at Dimond Park in the Mendenhall Valley.

Mary Becker

Age: N/A

Family in Juneau: Husband, Jim, and two grown children, Rob, a commercial fisherman, and Kristy, a teacher at Juneau-Douglas High School.

Occupation: Retired. Taught in Juneau schools for 30 years.

Education: B.A. from the College of Idaho, now called Albertson's College of Idaho, in Caldwell. Has taken post-graduate courses, many at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Voters blocked a 1,080-student school at Dimond Park in a special election May 25. The School Board now is asking voters to approve $54 million in bonds to build an 840-student school instead.

Becker believes that with two smaller high schools it will be easier for students and teachers to know each other, and more students can be involved in after-school activities. Those elements will help keep students in school.

"I know that it is true that when students are in activities they do better in school, because when you're involved you want to stay in school," she said.

Becker said she'd like to see the School Board do more to reduce class sizes. For this school year, the board added two teachers to help with enrollment bulges. But the board must balance the number of teachers with appropriate pay and other expenses such as textbooks, she said.

Even before the federal No Child Left Behind Act passed two years ago, school districts in Alaska were working to improve. But scores on standardized tests now play into whether a school is federally listed as needing improvement, with consequences ranging from offering tutoring to letting children enroll in other schools.

Juneau's two middle schools and JDHS were on the list this year.

Becker said the district is adding counselors at the middle schools to help keep children from dropping out; hired specialists in English and math; implemented the Fast ForWord computer-based learning program; and hired a truancy officer, among other steps to improve the schools.

"We need parents' help," she said. "We need parent support. We need parents in the classroom. We need parents at home, making a place for (children) to study and showing they value education."

As efforts to improve JDHS, Becker also cited the CHOICE program for students at risk of dropping out, an option in math programs, the Early Scholars program to encourage Natives to prepare for college, the Fast ForWord program, study halls, and after-school practice sessions for the state exit exam.

Racial tensions last school year grew out of an incident in which one student in a school bus held up a sign that was derogatory toward Natives. The antagonism widened when students of various ethnicities spray-painted the school with the letters K-A-N, which many interpreted as anti-Native.

District officials met with Native organizations, students and community members to try to get to the bottom of what students were feeling, and what suggestions they had to improve the situation, Becker said.

The district developed a "safe school" plan for all grades, discussed with teachers how to treat harassment, encouraged students to report incidents, and added more-specific language to its policy about harassment, Becker said.