Juneau Board of Education candidate profile: Melissa Cullum

Juneau Board of Education candidate Melissa Cullum on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Independent)

By Jasz Garrett

Juneau Independent

Melissa Cullum: Juneau Board of Education candidate for one of three open seats

Age: 50

Occupation: Freelance writer and editor

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: What is your background in education? 

“I’ve been a teacher in urban, inner city schools and I’ve been a teacher in rural Alaska (Angoon).”

Q: What was it like being a teacher in rural Alaska?

“It was a challenge, but it was a good challenge, because I was hired as a language arts teacher. But because of the dynamics of rural schools, you don’t have a lot of staff. I didn't only teach language arts, I taught journalism, I taught a debate class, I taught an art class, I taught a theater class, I coached volleyball. I became a Jane of all trades, so to speak. I had to kind of teach a lot of different things and learn how to inspire kids in an area that was not my area of expertise.”

Q: Juneau is not a rural school district, but it has some of those challenges you talked about with limited staff. How would you address recruitment and retention for the Juneau School District as a board member?

“I think one of the things we need to look at for our hiring and retention is we need to actually be talking to our teachers. One of the things that I have done as a community member is I have stayed active in the education community even though I'm no longer an educator, and talking to teachers is just something that I've always done. And the teachers will tell you what they need. They are missing the resources. They're missing the support. They're not feeling appreciated, and their time that they need to allocate for planning and making sure students are getting all their needs met is being taken up with a lot of busy work that takes away from their time in the classroom.”

Q: It sounds like you may have some personal experience knowing what that is like, having to juggle multiple sessions and tasks? How do you think that would help you connect with the teachers in finding a solution?

“Yes. I think understanding what the dynamics are within the classroom and what the expectations are for a teacher, and seeing what their needs are, then pairing that with our resources that we have in the district to see how we can meet their individual needs, so they can meet their students’ needs in the classroom. So I think kind of individualizing it and getting to know our teachers is a good way to make sure that we're retaining them, and making sure that they get their needs met.”

Q: What makes you want to be a school board member? Why do you care about our schools?

“I have always been passionate about education. I feel we need to have an educated populace. If we don't have an educated community we can't function. I feel that public education, even though I have chosen to homeschool my children, I believe that public education is a foundation in our country and everyone deserves a quality education. And as I've mentioned to you prior to the meeting, my kids are now older, and I have a kid entering high school and my oldest one has just entered college, so I have a little more free time to devote to my community's needs.”

Q: What homeschool program do you use? Did you try to go through HomeBRIDGE?

“I use Raven. When I originally started homeschooling, just like now, HomeBRIDGE is not a developed program. It's not fully developed and it doesn't have everything you need to really give your students or your child a well-rounded education if you need support. If you're someone who doesn't need any support, and you're very comfortable with all the subjects, HomeBRIDGE is fantastic, but with its staffing issues there’s an issue.”

Q: Do you think that's something you would want to work on as a board member so more people choose the option to homeschool within the district?

“Absolutely. I think that we need to flesh out that program. I think one of the things that the big issue has been: ‘Do we allocate funds to HomeBRIDGE or not allocate funds to HomeBRIDGE?’ And by doing that, if we did allocate more funds there and had more staffing, we could actually draw more people from Raven and IDEA into our district, and then we could get their money instead of how it's set up now, when my child wants to take classes at the high school or any school in the district, I have to take money out of my allotment, and I pay the district. They don't get as much money from me as they would if I used their homeschool program. So if it was a fully fleshed out homeschool program, I think you could incorporate more families.”

Q: My next question is kind of a branch off of the recruitment and retention question, but in particular looking at the struggle to retain paraeducators. And so what are your thoughts on the importance of supporting children with special needs, and how would you make sure those needs, and the needs of paraeducators, are being addressed?

“That goes back to funding, I think, and it goes back to utilizing our resources in a more efficient way. Right now, I think we just look at how much funds we have, and we just parse them out equally. And yes, every kid, every school needs an equal amount of funding, but we also need to look where is it going? Is it going into our administration? Is it going into our teachers? Is it going into curriculum? Is it going into testing? So where is our funding going? And so when we're looking at that, then maybe we need to look at, how are we training our paraprofessionals? Are they getting the needs that they need? Are they getting the planning time that they need? Are they getting listened to? Are they being communicated with, be it the board, teachers? So what's missing there? And then, when you're looking at our special education that goes back to staffing, which once again, goes back to funding. Our sped students are not getting the services that they need. There are multiple holes in our sped services that we offer, and it would be nice to be able to see the full picture, to see what I could do to help make sure those students are getting the services they are required by law.”

Q: Can you think of specific holes that you've been noticing?

“I know that there are not enough paraprofessionals for the kids who are in pullouts, I know that there are not enough there's not enough staff. There's least restrictive environments, and those are special ed students that are allowed to move through the classrooms. And sometimes they have a para, sometimes they don't. And then there's those that are self contained. We don't have enough teachers or staff for the self-contained student, and then those that are in the LREs, the least restrictive environment, they don't have someone that can shadow them or follow them or make sure that they're meeting all of their needs in all of their classes, and that person might change throughout the day. So making sure maybe you have someone that that's your contact person as a sped student.”

Q: There's two unions currently trying to reach a contract agreement with the school district, and public testimonies have sought more engagement from school board members. What would be your approach to this situation?

“I think it does go back to the communication piece because I think that if I know what my teachers are needing, and then I can be honest and tell them where we are funding, and what we can provide and where we can bridge that gap, and what gap we can't bridge and come to an agreement, I think that we could work towards better contract negotiations. But that takes communication. And this is a board decision. The board can decide to communicate and engage with the stakeholders, but the board has chosen not to, so that would be something that I would advocate for, is making sure that we are communicating everything to our stakeholders that we can.”

Q: What are your thoughts on the privatization and the uncertain future of the RALLY program, given the ongoing lawsuit?

“With RALLY, I have a lot of personal opinions about that, but I'm not quite sure where I would stand as a board member honestly, because I don't have all of the background information. My main concerns with RALLY is one, it seems like the district was not forthright in communicating just the dire needs of where RALLY was going to be by the end of the school year last year. I do not think that RALLY should be in a in a religious setting. I firmly believe in the separation of church and state. I would be worried to make sure that they're not being taught things that they should not be taught in a public setting. I don't know what the costs involve. I don't know how that changes for the parents, because parents do have to participate pay for RALLY, so I don't know where those costs are.”

Q: Would you like to see the cost analysis JESS is requesting?

“Yes. That would help me be able to make a more clear decision, an informed decision.”

Q: How would you navigate losing $8 million, which is about 10% of the operating budget for FY 2025-2026, if the Alaska Department of Education and Early development’s local contribution limitations go into place in October?

“That is a sticky one, because the district is already severely underfunded. So looking at it financially, obviously we'd have to make some adjustments, some cuts. But I would also want to look at different ways to look at how we are designating our schools, different ways that we could look at additional funding that could help fill in those gaps, what kind of partnerships that we could make.  I just would kind of look at where we are in the budget, what kind of holes we have, where we could find other resources to fill those holes. And then what areas could we possibly shave? I mean, because in the end, you've got to cut if the money's not there.”

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

“That's a great question because I feel that diversity, equity and inclusion should not be a dirty thing. I think that goes back to the whole foundation of what public education is about. If you can go back all the way to the 1800s and Plessy versus Ferguson, when Black students were not allowed in school, so they decided separate but equal was OK. And then we fast forward to the civil rights movement and you realize that separate but equal is not OK. Students were not getting the fair and equitable education, so we then had Brown versus the Board of Education, which got rid of discrimination in school. Fast forward. Then we got with the Department of Ed., we had IDEA which helped bring inclusion of special ed students to make sure that they were getting quality education. So when we're looking at federal funding, we need the funding. With the dismantling of the Department of Education, they are going to give those funds to the state. The state will be the ones who, technically, who are going to manage it. Given our political climate in our state, I don't see that we're going to have a deluge of funding. So that's a really sticky question. You can't just give it a, ‘I would definitely take federal funds’ — obviously you need to take funds — (or) ‘I would get rid of DEI’ because we need inclusion. We need everyone to have a good education. We need everyone to have an equal playing field. And that's the beauty of public education.”

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

“I think the consolidation plan has been pretty bad. I was not in favor of the consolidation. I didn't think the way that they did it was mindful of students or teachers. There was no transition plan. There was no post consolidation plan on how they were going to transition students. There's been nothing for the mental health of the students or the teachers or the school climate in this consolidation plan. And then if you take a step back and you look at the curriculum elementary students, the sixth graders are missing classes. They still don't have access to science and history. Fifth- and sixth-grade teachers have to scramble to piecemeal to make sure those kids are getting those subjects. Middle school students are repeating classes that they had the year before because no one paid attention to their schedule, because there was no planning. High school students have holes in their schedules, they don't have classes. And high school students are even repeating classes, or they can't get into classes because the teacher-student ratio is too high. So I think that the consolidation has kind of been not great. There's a lot of room for improvement. That said, we are already here, so we need to look at ways to fix it and and to improve it. And I've got some ideas for that too.”

Q: What are some of your ideas? 

“Let's look at how we designate our schools. Right now, our alternative schools have the lowest PTR, which is pupil-teacher ratio, and so that's small class sizes. The smaller the class size, the better education your child's going to receive. Those schools are also designated differently, the the way the funding works for the state, so they get a different funding. So their funding is different than the pool that we have for the whole district. So if we can look at creative ways to bring in programs that either are partnerships or that are grant funded, or restructuring to where we can capture the most of our funding, then we can maybe better tailor education to our students, bringing in the homeschool component again, and or the university for the high school kids, you could totally tailor. They would not need to have any holes. They could take online classes. They could take classes at the university. You've got to get creative with how we're structuring our schools, and I don't mean that in terms of changing or restructuring, but just looking at how we designate them.”

Q: What are your thoughts on the new cellphone ban policy that started this school year?

“I'm probably going to be very controversial on this, but I'm not for the ban. I think banning of anything is pretty much not the direction I like to go. I see the value. It's initially, it is a good thing because the goal is to have students focus on school, to probably reduce cyberbullying, to reduce distractions. All of those are fantastic. However, we live in a world where technology is king and cellphones are going to be here forever. If not them, then it's going to be something else. So I think rather than banning it and taking it away, I would have rather have seen something where maybe there was a mandatory class that every student had to take on how to manage your cellphone. What is addictive behavior? How to break away from that and look at cellphones from like a mental health or a social construct, on how we can use that cellphone as a tool, like you use a calculator. We're not distracted by our calculator. We use it as a tool. And so just changing the way people think, instead of just completely getting rid of it.”

Q: What long-term planning should the school board be considering given the homeporting of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Storis in the coming years?

“I think that falls into the strategic plan. The strategic plan is something the district does, creates every five years. They work with community members, they work with businesses, they work with teachers, they work with admin, and they work with community members, students and parents. The last strategic plan that the district put out didn't have really any measurable goals. It had no metrics. It had no object, no objectives, and it had no scope. So I think I would like to first see where we are as a district, where we want to be, and then start laying out clear guidelines on how to get there, and looking at it as far as student success. How are we going to measure student success? What kind of classes are we offering students? Are we preparing them for the future? What are we going to do with funding as flat funding is probably going to continue and the funding issues are going to grow? So I think these are different things that we could outline within the scope and sequence of the strategic plan, and then have clear metrics where we can communicate with everyone in the community and in our district what goals we're meeting, where we're not, what we need to get there.”

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

“I think it's great. I think that kind of goes into what I was talking about, about our alternative programs. This one is funded by SHI. It's a partnership with our district. It supplements our district. And so kids are able to learn a language that was when I moved here, 20 years ago, was virtually dying and is now finding a revitalization. And so one of the things the district does well is making sure that we try to make connections with the land and the people. And this is a good way for our Native and non-Native students to make connections with the land and the people as well.”

Q: How would you want to see it grow in the district?

“Ideally, I'd like to see it be in more than one location. I think it's primarily in the Harborview school and it would be nice to branch out. It would be nice to see the progress. So I do know that there was some Tlingit language options in the high school previously. I don't know if those are still there this year. I have not looked. But it would be nice if we had some continuation through middle school too, and so that way these students are learning all the way through those, that want, they have the option to do so.”

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

“The reason why I'm running is because I really want to see our community succeed, and I think we're the capital city and, instead of worrying about how we're going to staff our classrooms, I would love to see us being the pilots and being the pioneers of programs that are working for our students. Trying new things out in math and science and language arts, as far in all grade levels. There's some really neat things going on out there and I would like us to be in the forefront.”

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