Juneau Board of Education candidate profile: Jenny Thomas

Juneau Board of Education candidate Jenny Thomas on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Independent)

By Jasz Garrett

Juneau Independent

Jenny Thomas: Juneau Board of Education candidate

Age: 47

Occupation: Business owner

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: Last year when you ran, you said the school board could benefit from having someone with a different perspective on the board. I’m wondering, what about your perspective has changed in the last year, and also, what do you think is still needed?

“From last year, a new perspective, meaning, like a fresh voice, someone that's coming in, basically as a parent, that's reached out to the community and talked to a lot of people. I've talked to several board members, and I align with some of the things they say, and then I watch the meetings and I'm like, ‘Why are you not asking that question?’ Like, my perspective is ‘I'm not afraid to ask a question and I'm not afraid to say something and be wrong.’ If I'm wrong, I'll be like, ‘OK, thanks for clarifying that.’ And I just think that that's missing.”

“You will hear in board meetings, ‘Oh, that didn't really answer my question, but OK.’ And I'm like, ‘No, get your question answered.’ Like you're asking that question for a reason, because you're signing off on this budget, or different things that are going on. So if you didn't get your question answered, that means the rest of the community is probably not understanding it as well. So I'm just hoping that I can be maybe a voice of more common sense.”

Q: What is your background in education? You have kids in the school district and you used to volunteer in their classrooms, is there anything else you would like to add?

“I substitute taught the year that the consolidation process started, I was substitute teaching. I did a couple things at Glacier Valley, and then I tried to do my time more at Thunder Mountain, just because that's where my kids were going to school and I just kind of wanted to be in that environment. And I did notice that they were stretched thin on paraeducators, especially in elementary school. And it was like, you're already herding cats as it is, and so then you are short on a para and then they're swapping duties. And so when I would help in my kids' class, it was like that kid had a para, and I think it helped create a bond with that para, and the kid probably (was) helped (to) stay on task a little bit more. Maybe when they went off to music, they got a different kind of a para, but they're short-staffed now, so it's kind of like juggling to make sure they can cover as much as they can. I don't think that's fair to the kids, and it's definitely not fair to the paras or the teachers. So I think that we really need to work on getting some good support staff, some teachers, and work on that gap.”

Q: That leads into a question I have about recruitment and retention, specifically the struggle to retain paraeducators. What are your thoughts on importance of supporting children with special needs and how would you make sure those needs are being addressed that you say isn’t happening right now?

“The board members need to, for lack of better words, get their hands dirty. Why are we not retaining paras? We need to sit down and ask them why, versus taking the administration's word, like we did these exit surveys and everything, that’s wonderful. I want to talk directly to them. Why are you leaving? What could we do to make you guys stay? Because we're hearing one thing, like hearing things third party, even with the best intentions, something's going to get lost in the translation. And I feel like that is definitely happening with what the teachers are feeling when you're listening to them testify right now. The contracts that are going on, I just learned board members aren't even in the negotiations. That makes zero sense to me. How can I fulfill what you need if I'm not in negotiations, even if I don't have a vote, just to listen. You want me to sign off on this contract that I had nothing to do creating.”

Q: If board members were allowed to be part of negotiations, what would your approach to mediation be? Like you noted, many public testimonies are asking for more direct engagement from school board members.

“I was literally floored that they were not in there, that the board members were not in there, at least one or two of them, to report back. Why are you signing their contracts if you're not in on the negotiations?”

“I would like to be a fly on the wall, at least to know, because otherwise they're spending their time outside of school to come and complain to me, and I literally have no say in it, right? So they're wasting their time talking to the board right now.”

Q: What would that look like if one or two school board members were involved with that? Do you think one or two people should be assigned to do that?

“For sure. I think that would at least make teachers feel more heard, and then you're hearing what's actually being negotiated on, and you may think twice about giving someone in the administration a raise, right? If we can't give our teachers a raise, why are we giving our administration a raise? Why are we increasing admin positions when we have gaps in our teachers’ position that are hard to fill because we can't get them a salary that they need? Well, we don't need A, B and C over here, or we could do without, because what we need right now is all hands on deck with the students. What is going to make our students successful? And you can have the fanciest software, and you can have the greatest newsletter app out there. But if you don't have small class sizes and enough teachers to teach your kids, you're not doing any good.”

Q: How would you go about forming that response and approaching it with the current school board members?

“I would say, ‘Hey, we need to get in on the negotiations, even if we can just sit in and listen. Like, do we want to take a vote? Who wants to go and be there? I'll take JESS, you take JEA.’ I'm sure there's probably something like, ‘We've never done that before.’ Well, it's time to start doing things we've never done before.”

Q: What other things do you think have never been done before that you would want to pursue?

“I would really like to get a senior volunteer program going. And by that I mean like the Pioneer Home or Riverview. I would like to get that started with some of the elders there that could possibly go into the elementary school specifically and work with kindergarteners on reading. I think that would benefit the kindergarteners, and I think that would benefit the seniors as well. My grandma, when she lived at the Pioneer Home, she volunteered at the Head Start that was in the Pioneer Home five days a week, and it changed her personality and her happiness like instantly, to be helping kids, whether it's just being the grandma that they get to run up and hug, you know. And so I think that that would benefit our community greatly.”

Q: Back to the union topic. What are your thoughts on privatizing the RALLY program and the uncertain future there given JESS’s lawsuit?

“I don't understand the whole RALLY situation. If you look at the RALLY budget, we're not struggling in RALLY. So are we not retaining staff truly? Is that truly the problem that they don't want to work there? I mean, I doubt it. I think that there's something else at play, just like last year, and if they're filing a lawsuit that tells you it wasn't staffing so much, you know? And I feel like we've got uncertain times with our budget. We are now losing, we just lost a bunch of revenue, right? I mean, we're not going to get that money from RALLY anymore. We're not going to get $688 bucks a month from each kid, or over $1,000 in the summer. How are we going to make up for that, when we might be getting cut other ways? So the fact that A, the board was taken off guard by that completely, to me, should be a big red flag to everyone. Like, if they were so shocked, they could have said, ‘Nope, not happening.’ I mean, that's what they're supposed to do, in my opinion. I could be completely wrong, but their job is to oversee the superintendent, and he's supposed to report to them, not to tell them.”

Q: So you think they could have better overseen the decision to close the program?

“Yes, rather than being like, ‘Oh, that's happening?’ Like, the board members I talked to were shocked. They knew that there had been issues, but they were like, totally caught off guard. That is unacceptable.”

Q: Would you want to know where the $1 million is going that’s allocated for RALLY in this fiscal year’s budget? And after that, how would you follow up?

“Yes, that would be my first question. I probably wouldn't have allowed it to be closed. I mean, I would have said, ‘No, we'll figure something else out.’ I mean, because RALLY is a huge thing for the school district in general, and parents, and now you're negotiating for a third party that's using our facilities, right? And from what I've heard, they're using them rent-free, whether it's for the first year or not. But we don't have money to give away at this point, right? We need every dollar.”

Q: How would you navigate losing $8 million which is about 10% of the operating budget for this school year, if the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development local contribution limitations go into place next month?

“What I would do is I would go to the city and say, ‘OK, well, I would like our rent reduced drastically, and I would like our utilities included in our rent,’ right? That's going to save us, hopefully, at least a million. I don't know what our rent is, but we pay rent to the city, and then the city gives us money, right? Lower our rent, put our utilities in there. That's going to help out for a big chunk. If it's desperate, then we'll have to ask for a loan, like they did for the consolidation, until we get a different governor, and the BSA goes up. I mean, there are options around it. I wouldn't be operating out of the fear that they're operating on now. I'd be like, ‘well, we're going to figure it out.’ If they're going to say that for the local contributions, what's that going to do to our property taxes? Because our property taxes, a large amount goes so the city can fund our schools. So I feel like the citizens of Juneau have a right to say, ‘Hey, sorry.’ Or you can funnel the activities through the booster clubs.”

Q: JSD has said some of the fear around that happening is they are not exactly sure what all it impacts with local contributions. If you were on the school board when this first got brought up, the local contribution limitation, what would have been your first step?

“I would have reached out to the city Assembly and said, ‘Hey, how can we look at this, what's it going to do if you reduce our rent to this? What's that going to do for our budget?’ If they change the wording, where can we change how the things we use from you are done so that we're not losing a million dollars, right? So, could you, if all the athletics they give us, supposedly, like, a million dollars, can you spread that out through the booster club, so that it's not directly to the school, so it doesn't fall into the parameters? Can you do the deferred maintenance on our buildings? I mean, we rent them from you, right? I mean, I have rentals. When something breaks at my house, I don't make my renters buy mine a boiler. I have to pay that, right? So, why is the city not putting in for our deferred maintenance? Why are they not fixing the boiler at JDHS or the roof? They're their buildings to maintain.”

Q: How did you feel about the Assembly deciding not to have that on the ballot this year, the proposition for deferred maintenance on schools? 

“I think that actions speak louder than words, right? You can say this is very important to us and all this stuff, but if you don't follow through with it, I just wish there was more people running for Assembly.”

Q: Why did you decide to run for the school board instead of Assembly?

I am not a political person and this is out of my realm in general, right? I mean, I've learned a lot about the school board. I don't know enough knowledge about the city Assembly, and I feel like I've kind of started this and I want to see it through. I feel like I can make an impact on the school board right now. I feel like there's other people I've tried to push towards running for Assembly that are just very smart business people, that are common sense, that I think would be a good voice on the Assembly.”

Q: What are your thoughts on the cellphone ban policy that went into effect this school year?

“I really liked it. I liked it when it came out. My daughter is totally fine with it. At first, she was like, ‘How dare they?’ And then she was like, ‘It’s actually kind of nice, mom. It’s not bad at all.’ So I'm going to be curious to see when test scores roll around, if it's made a difference in the kids' test scores.”

Q: If you were faced with the decision to keep federal funding or eliminate DEI, what would you do in that situation?

“I would eliminate DEI because I feel like when DEI first came around, I feel like it was probably definitely needed. And I think as time has gone on, I don't think that there is as much discrimination as there was in the past. I know that it’s still out there, but I think that we should be looking at things differently. I feel like when you listen to the systemic racism, right? You hear that a lot, and I feel like talking about racism is extremely important, and we should never forget. But I also think that if you're telling kids that the world's against them because they are A, B or C, you're basically putting something in their head that they are less than already, right? And you're also telling kids that aren't diverse, that they think bad of people and I don't think that that's healthy either. And I think you can still deal with DEI issues.”

Q: Without having the terminology?

“It's just a word, right? You have to still have people that are willing to speak up and say, ‘Hey, you treated me like this, right?’ And have somebody defend you, regardless if it's a law or not, and if they don't, then you take it up, you take it up, you take it up. But that's not really protecting you if you don't speak out in the first place. Like that piece of paper that you sign that says we will include everybody doesn't mean anything if you're not enforcing it. So to me it's a piece of paper. I think that when somebody has been wronged, they need to speak up about it, or go to somebody that will help them speak up and not stop until they get the answers they want. We need to make our kids and our adults strong enough to speak up for themselves and say, ‘Hey, I'm not OK with that,” and it’s hard and it's tricky, but having a DEI policy is not going to make people braver, in my opinion.”

Q: Do you think that Alaska Native language curriculum and programming is important? Why or why not? 

“I think it's very important. I think it is culture and history and it's very interesting. I don't know much about the curriculum here in Juneau. I'd be curious to know about it, but I think that there's ways to enrich it. And like, there's that cemetery in Funter Bay, right? You can barely find that. And so when I went there with my kids, we took our boat there, and they have fixed it up inside there. And it's an impact when you go to something like that, versus reading it in a story, right? So if we could get more field trips, or hands-on experiences...When I was doing the recall petition, I was outside on the sidewalk at Centennial during Celebration, and I was moved to tears. I had never been around in that and it was beautiful. I didn't know if I was allowed to go in there or not. I didn't know how it worked, is it just for people who are in the Celebration ceremony? Because I would have loved to gone in there and gone in there and watched...Videos of that should be shown at school and stuff like that. Like hands-on learning and a Native dance would be awesome.”

“I heard this year that the middle school did an introduction for middle schoolers, like a week, camp. And I thought that was a great idea. And I'm sure that we could do something like that with the Tlingit culture, like an immersion week or something. We have sea week, why can't we have a Tlingit immersion week? It could really spark interest in a lot of kids.”

Q: How do you feel the consolidation plan is going now that it has been a year?

“I still think the same problems are there. I still think we need to figure out our middle school curriculum. It seems to be a hot mess.”

Q: Does your daughter go to Thunder Mountain (Middle School)? 

“She’s a senior this year at JD. I still know that there's a lot of kids that have gaps in their schedules. I have freshmens that don't have a third period. If anybody doesn't have a period, it should be a senior or a junior that's close to their credits. But I mean, you have a gap? Why can't you be a teacher's aide? Why can't you go next door to Harborview and help out in the kindergarten class? Just free roam with no license and no job to go anywhere? That's just asking for getting in trouble, in my opinion. And so I think that we really need to work on that. And then the sixth grade is still struggling with how they're going to roll that math course out. A lot of kids had to duplicate it, and it's like, they're still out a year of education, right? If they had to duplicate a course, how are you going to fix that? Do you have any plays? Or is it going to be like, ‘Oh, let's hope these next three years, these kids, we’ll just brush them under the carpet, and then everything will be rosy.’ It's going to continue. It's a snowball effect. And I think we need to address those gaps, and that's what I hope to do, not point out every flaw, but say, ‘Hey, we're not perfect, and how do we fix this problem?’”

Q: I asked you last year about the homeporting of the icebreaker coming in and how to support those families and students. Can you share your thoughts now?

“I hope we can fix some of the problems before they get here, because that was the whole thing is, ‘Oh, we have no guarantees it's coming, right?’ So, I mean, I hope that we have housing for them, and I really hope that we have a school district that they want to enroll their kids in. And I just noticed in the budget that HomeBRIDGE doesn't seem to be getting extra funding.”

Q: I thought you had said last year your daughter went to JD and then she transitioned to being homeschooled following the consolidation?

“She went to JD for two classes, and then she did homeschool and university. And we didn't do HomeBRIDGE because we couldn't get a real person. They were so swamped. And so I feel like I would like to beef that program up, especially for high schoolers.”

Q: Do you feel like that hasn’t been on the radar of the school board — the increasing enrollment of homeschoolers?

Mhm, or why we're losing so many students, but yet, Raven and IDEA are swamped. That doesn't make much sense to me. From what I hear, it’s a lot easier to deal with HomeBRIDGE and intermingling your credits and whatnot. But we need to definitely address that situation, because we're losing thousands and thousands of dollars and sending it to the Fairbanks School District when kids go to IDEA or Raven. That's where their money goes to. I feel like if we beef ours up and make it more attractive, we could make it so much easier. You could have middle schoolers doing one class, and their kids and their parents are like, ‘Oh, I'll pull them out, and then we'll do HomeBRIDGE for these activities,’ and you're still getting your BSA allotment. The kids are still getting the socialization that they need. They're getting more and more comfortable with the school environment, right? But last year, they didn't want to push getting kids more comfortable with the school environment, because they were already at capacity with like ‘We don't know, we have so many kids coming into one building,’ it was kind of like, ‘Shh. Don't talk about it. We'll see what happens.”

Q: In the past year, you testified about the school fights at the middle school and high school. What are your thoughts on that now?

“I haven't heard people reaching out about it, and so I don't know if it's calmed down or people just got tired of complaining about it. The other thing I noticed at the last school board meeting is that they said,’ Oh, we've got our counts for athletics,’ but they didn't say what the numbers were, and that's because they've declined dramatically. They were so proud that they were so high last year, because everybody's like, the consolidation is going to bring less opportunities. And they're proving, ‘No, it's great, it's great, it's great.’ And now you see the decline...They were bragging about the meetings: ‘We've had 80 people doing this, and it's great.’ And when it was two schools, this was our number, so it's just the same. And this year, zip, they didn't talk about it. And volleyball went from over 80 kids to I think maybe 60 now.”

Q: What would your approach to navigating the challenges to student activities be?

“I literally don't know. Volleyball, I know for sure, because my daughter was in it, did an amazing job of handling that many kids and trying to get them, but they can only do so much, right? And they admitted, like, ‘Whoa, that was insane.’ That was a crazy year. I mean, like, three C teams and practice, that was a lot for those coaches to handle, and so I think that it's we got less and less girls. But what are those 20 kids doing now? What’s their mental health?”

Q: What else would you like voters to know about why you're running for school board and what you hope to achieve?

“I'm running for school board because I hope that I can make a change and bring some accountability to the district, and be a voice that's not afraid to ask questions and have the unpopular opinion.”

• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.