Primary will narrow fall choices for school board/By Martha Knight

The Port Allegany School District has a bumper crop of candidates seeking the four positions available in this year’s election.

Nine persons have filed nominating petitions: Of those, seven cross-filed, and will appear on both the Republican and Democratic ballots. They are incumbents David Mensch and Rodney Howard, and would-be trustees Allen Long, Jason A. Stake, Jeanette M. Burleson, Lisa A. Drabert and Mark P. Carlson.

In addition, incumbent Denise Herger Buchanan seeks a Republican nomination, and Kaci L. Daniels filed for a Democratic nomination.

Each party will narrow down its eight ballot choices to four, in the May 21 primary. If both parties nominate the same four, those persons will be as good as elected. But if there are differences between those two sets of four, the voters will reduce the list to the “same four” in November.

The increased interest in serving on the board has been attributed to the energy within the Academic Improvement Committee, (AIC) on which several current board members serve and from whose ranks other candidates have come forward.

Dave Mensch taught science at Port Allegany Junior-Senior High School for 36 years, retiring in 2000 after heading the science department for many years. Mensch also spent a year teaching in Russia as a visiting master teacher. He is in his twelfth year of service on the board and is seeking a fourth four-year term. At a candidates’ forum he observed that he has spent nearly 50 years in education, in Port Allegany.

At the same forum Rodney Howard said he had been planning to step aside after this, his third term, but decided to seek another term after he was encouraged by seeing the energy for improvement in the system, through the AIC.

Noting that the state is trending toward asking school districts to fund programs more from local resources, and that costs are trending upward, while local resources are diminishing, Howard pointed out that the district faces “hot issues”—need for and timing of renovations, and the retirement resignations of two key school administrators.

Allen Long is a Coudersport native. He has a farm on Sartwell Creek Road, in the Pleasant Valley Township portion of the bi-county school district. The father of two, he says he has a strong desire to see kids given opportunities to develop in positive ways.

Marc Carlson has been active in the AIC and has attended recent school board meetings. A senior dentist at Carlson Dental, the lifelong community resident says local schools prepared him well for further education, and he has been exposed to many great educators.

Carlson says he is supportive of the current board members and staff in their efforts to bring about academic improvement. He recalls that 25 years ago the local school system’s students received some of the highest scores on college entrance tests, and wants to see the system help students toward high achievement.

Jason Stake did not provide a statement and did not attend the candidates’ forum.

Lisa Drabert of Roulette is proprietor of Drabert’s Mini Mart, a convenience store. She says she has been keenly interested in the school system as a parent, but postponed efforts to become a school board member until her children were graduated.

Drabert believes the school board should include business minded people in addition to professionals, because the community at large includes many business operators and employees. She says she would advocate for maintaining good music and art programs, even when fiscal stress brings calls for cuts in program.

Jeanette M. Burleson has been an active AIC member. She is a certified science teacher and spent 10 years teaching in the Olean, N.Y. School system. She has been outspoken in her insistence that science classes should be provided in elementary school throughout the school year, even when teachers are emphasizing reading and math prior to the PSSA tests.

Burleson said that the Port Allegany schools do a good job in helping students at the lower end of the ability range, but would like to see an equal effort to meet the needs of students at the opposite end of the range. She has also suggested that programs be developed whereby the skills, experience and knowledge of the community’s many highly accomplished members be utilized in the school program.

Denise Herger Buchanan has been a lifelong resident of Port Allegany, and her four children are graduates of the system, according to her remarks at the candidates’ forum.

Noting that the local schools’ PSSA scores have not always been “what we had hoped for,” she said that as a board member serving on the AIC, she is encouraged to see such strong support for a constantly improving academic program.

Buchanan said that facilities improvement has been an important issue. She added, “I saw coming from that a lot of community involvement and more attendance at board meetings, in the ‘gallery.’”

Kaci L. Daniels is an alumna of the local school system, graduated magna cum laude from Saint Francis University, teaches social studies at Otto-Eldred Junior-Senior High School.

Daniels says she wants to take an active role in the future of her home school district. “As a department chair and district leader in technology integration, I believe I am a valuable asset when considering both curriculum and technology,” she states.