School Board Candidate Forum At Chamber Luncheon

As a teacher, Stephen has specialized in teaching music, earning his degree from Albion College and observing and interning extensively in rural and suburban schools in Michigan. Now in his ninth year as an instructor, he taught first at public and private schools in Arizona before landing a dream job at MEHS. His educational philosophy is child-centered, focused on the belief that the educational program should embrace the whole child and use lessons and materials that speak to children where they are in order to teach them necessary content. To this end, the MEHS music program features a rock and popular music ensemble in place of a conventional concert band.

As a candidate, Stephen is concerned with equity, comprehensive and inclusive curricula, local control, and financial realism. He believes that tough decisions must be made about finances in order to provide all students with the most options possible both within and without the classroom while also attracting and retaining the best professional staff possible. In a time of increasing national and state mandates, he wants to see the local community and board assert more strongly their voices in designing and preserving the schools and school culture that Sitka needs.

Lon Garrison  I grew up on a small cattle ranch 70 miles southeast of Denver, Colorado. I was actively involved in 4H as a youth and participated in activities ranging from horsemanship, to raising beef and sheep to livestock judging. I attended Douglas County High School in Castle Rock, Colorado.

I graduated with a B.S. in Fishery Biology from Colorado State University in 1986. While at CSU, I became an avid rugby player for the next 8 years. It was as a freshman in college that I first came to Alaska in the summer of 1981 as a volunteer for the US Forest Service on the Seward Ranger District. After my first summer in Seward, I knew Alaska would be my home. During my undergraduate career I worked for 6 seasons as a fisheries technician on the Seward Ranger District and spent one winter as a foreign fisheries observer on Japanese and Polish trawlers in the Bering Sea. That same year, I spent 1 semester at the University of Edinburgh, in Edinburgh Scotland studying fisheries in that part of the world.

I attended graduate school at the University of Vermont (UVM) where I studied the winter smelt fishery on Lake Champlain. It was at UVM that I met my wife Litia who was a graduate student in the zoology department. In 1988 I was fortunate to be hired by NSRAA, to fill a new fishery biologist position in Haines, Alaska where I lived and worked until 1994. I owned and operated a feed and farm supply store with my family in Salida, Colorado for a couple of years in the mid-90's. After missing Alaska far too much and we returned in 1996 when I was hired by Douglas Island Pink and Chum (DIPAC) as the hatchery biologist at the remote Snettisham Sockeye Hatchery 40 miles SE of Juneau. In 1998 I took the position as Hatchery Manager at the Port Armstrong Hatchery on the southern end of Baranof Island until 2001 when we moved to Sitka and I returned to work for NSRAA. Since my return to NSRAA I have worked as a field projects biologist, managed the Hidden Falls Hatchery and Medvejie Hatchery and served as the operations manager. In 2011, I left NSRAA to join the Sitka Sound Science Center as the Aquaculture Director, a position I currently hold. My wife Litia, works for SEARHC as a grant director in the Community Health Services program. I have two wonderful and talented daughters; each graduated from Sitka High in 2008 and 2011. My daughters were home schooled until we moved to Sitka in 2001, and both have thrived and excelled in the Sitka school system.

I would like to continue to serve as a member of the Sitka School Board because I deeply care about our children's education. I am a strong advocate for public schools and am grateful for the excellent education I received as a youth and my daughters are now receiving. I feel my past experience serving on boards and commissions (Haines Borough Planning Commission Chairman) and working for a private, nonprofit organization led by a board of directors has prepared me well for participating on the school board.