ALPENA — All four candidates who will appear on the ballot for three open seats on the Alpena Public Schools Board of Education said the school district needs to do more to improve students’ academic performance.

Incumbents Gordon Snow and Eric Lawson and newcomers Sarah Costain and Monica Dziesinski each listed turning around lackluster standardized test scores as one of their top goals.

School board races are nonpartisan and board members serve four-year terms. Election Day happens on Nov. 5, but many voters are already casting ballots by mail.

Last school year, 39% of APS’s third- through eighth-graders were proficient readers and 31% scored proficient or better in math on state tests.

Snow, a retired teacher and school administrator who spent 34 years working for APS and has served on the school board for 17 years, said the district recently bought new math books and English materials and has given teachers new training.

“All of that should help improve how well the kids can read and do math, and that should improve their scores,” he said.

Snow added that the district’s programs providing kids with multiple post-secondary paths — including advanced classes, early college, and career and technical education programs — keep kids engaged.

Lawson, a music educator who described himself as “semi-retired” and who was first elected to the school board in 2020, said APS administrators recently identified a teacher using methods he described as “old-fashioned,” walking around the classroom and checking on every student at his or her desk, providing help as needed. Standardized test results for students in that teacher’s class exceeded other teachers, Lawson said.

“Using those old-fashioned, tried-and-true techniques, holding that as a model for our teachers, I think that is really going to bear fruit,” Lawson said.

Costain, a homemaker and volunteer, said she knows that new curriculum rolled out in the district has started to improve scores, but she said it’s important for the school board to continue to hold district administrators and teachers accountable for improving academic output.

“Definitely stay on top of it and hold the school accountable to make sure we are doing better and that the knowledge is being taught,” Costain said.

Dziesinski, a physician assistant at Alcona Health Center’s clinic at Alpena High School, said one of her top goals would be to address student behavior, because, she said, students acting out in class distract other students from learning.

“I wanna look at different avenues of trying to get those scores up in the district and being more supportive of those teachers,” she said.

Among his other goals, Snow said he wants to make sure the school board oversees the successful implementation of a recently approved strategic plan for the district. He wants to explore ways to improve outreach to the families of students eligible for return from long-term suspensions or expulsions because too many families don’t schedule reinstatement hearings until after school starts, which sets those kids behind for the school year.

He also said he feels “very strongly that board members need to remember they’re on the nonpartisan ballot.” He said he worries that his opponents are endorsed by the Northeast Michigan League of Conservative Education, which espouses school choice vouchers, public charter schools, and homeschooling, issues Snow called anathema to traditional public schools.

“If we don’t have a decent balance there, we could go off in a direction that — to me, anyway — is a little bit scary,” Snow said.

Lawson, meanwhile, said APS needs to pay close attention to its finances now that federal dollars meant to help districts overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have dried up. He said the district has to solve an ongoing staffing challenge, perhaps by making its compensation packages more attractive, and said the board has to work on “navigating the sort of confusing message we hear nationally and from the state regarding social issues,” such as rules regarding transgender students.

He also said he’s concerned about potentially inappropriate books on school library shelves and he’d like the board to review the process for parents to challenge such books.

Lawson said he would continue to work on challenging “newfangled and experimental initiatives” and would represent a segment of the community that wasn’t represented on the board before his election four years ago.

“My feeling is that we need to resist these things, because they are so new and untested,” he said. “I think that’s not partisan at all. I think that’s just being a good community member.”

Costain also said the district has to do more to address a shortage of teachers and needs to continue to support career and technical education. A mother of six children who currently attend private school but will all eventually transfer to APS, Costain said she’s invested in the district’s future.

“I have a genuine desire to serve this local community,” Costain said. “I’d like to contribute to the improvement of this education system. The children of APS are our future, and they all deserve the best education possible, and that’s what I would like to bring to the table.”

Dziesinski said that, in addition to working to improve academics, she’d like to look at potential reforms to school discipline, which she’d like to see focus more on in-school suspensions than out-of-school suspensions, which she said are “not really a punishment.”

And she’d like to see the district do more to help students with their mental health, perhaps by hiring more counselors and social workers or launching student groups to address anger management and other issues.

She said she sees students’ mental health issues firsthand through her work at the clinic.

“You’d be surprised how many kids are coming in for one thing and they were suicidal the night before,” she said.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.