Three board positions will be open this spring

Three of the five Sisters School Board positions will be on the ballot next May 20.

The three incumbents whose seats will be on the ballot are Eric Dolson, Steve Keeton and Jeff Smith. Dolson and Smith say they will run for re-election. Keeton will not.

"The main reason I'm not running again is the time commitment," Keeton explained last week. "It's really a big time commitment."

Keeton, 42, operates his own construction company.

Dolson, 53, is co-publisher with his wife of The Nugget. He was appointed to the board last June to replace Heather Wester, who resigned in mid-term.

If Dolson wins on May 20, he will serve out the remaining two years of Wester's original four-year term.

Dolson said last week that he wants to remain on the board to work on three main projects -- completion of the new Sisters High School building; selection of a new superintendent to replace Steve Swisher, who plans to retire in April; and improvement of certain areas of the curriculum, specifically math and foreign languages.

Smith, 57, is the board's current chairman. He was elected in 1999, along with Keeton. He has the most unusual career situation of any of the members: He is a professor of public administration at California State University-Dominguez Hills, in the Los Angeles basin.

Every Tuesday during the academic year he gets up at 3:45 a.m. and hops a plane to L.A. He teaches three midweek classes, then flies home Thursday evening.

"I also work on the plane," he said. "I'm pretty efficient."

Smith is enjoying a more relaxed schedule this year because he is on leave from his teaching post. But he plans to return in the fall for at least one more year of full-time work before retiring. He has been on the Dominguez Hills faculty for 27 years; he and his wife have lived in Sisters since 1995.

When Steve Keeton completes his term June 30, the board will be without the two members who constituted one side of the biggest controversy that divided the group during the past year -- the battle over how to dispose of $1.9 million in interest money the district expected to earn on the $20.5-million bond issue for the new high school.

Keeton and Heather Wester, then the board's chairwoman, advocated returning the interest earnings to the taxpayers. Board members Bill Reed and Glen Lasken argued for using the money instead to help pay construction costs of the new school.

Smith opted for splitting the difference, which is essentially what the board eventually did.

When she resigned last April, Wester pointed to that battle as a partial cause of her departure.

Interested candidates must file a petition of candidacy with the Deschutes County elections office by Thursday, March 20.