Corrigan, Lasken, Gould win school board seats

Last week’s election will produce two new members for the five-member Sisters School Board. And one of them would like to see future elections of this kind done in a different way.

In a post-election interview, Mike Gould, who was unopposed in seeking Position 1, now occupied by Eric Dolson, said: “I’m disappointed in the way the election turned out only from the standpoint that in a district where community involvement is so prevalent…it was disappointing to see two of the three school board positions be uncontested.

“It would have been better for the community if there had been a choice…Maybe there’s some way we can get a change to some kind of system where you vote for three and the top three get in…It would have been a much more enjoyable day if there had been six or seven people running for those three positions instead of just four.”

School Board Chairman Glen Lasken was unopposed in seeking re-election to Position 5.

The only contest was for Position 2, now held by veteran board member Bill Reed.

Rob Corrigan defeated Jeff Haken 62 percent to 38 percent in that race.

The countywide turnout for an election that featured primarily board positions for school, fire, water and other special districts was typically low — 23 percent.

But Corrigan found some encouragement in the fact that his contest with Haken drew almost as many votes as were cast on the local option levy proposed by the Sisters Organization for Activities and Recreation. Corrigan and Haken drew 2,140 combined votes while the SOAR measure received 939 “Yes” votes and 1,332 “No,” for a total of 2,281.

“I would have thought that SOAR, having high visibility and the measure being a pocketbook kind of issue…well, it’s good that people were also thinking about the schools,” Corrigan said.

For his part, Gould noted that the Sisters City Council is already chosen in the way he was proposing. If there are three seats to be filled on the council, the candidates run in a pack and the three with the highest number of votes win.

Gould said he didn’t know whether his idea would be allowed for school boards under state election law. When asked about that, a representative of the Oregon School Boards Association in Salem said she knew of no district in the state using the system and doubted that it would be legal.

Deschutes County Clerk Nancy Blankenship said a quick reading of relevant statutes indicated that school board members must run for specific positions, but she didn’t want to offer a definitive answer without doing more research.

In any case, the one certainty for now is that Corrigan and Gould will join the board as freshmen and Lasken will return as a six-year veteran. Their new four-year terms will officially begin in July. Gould has already taken a half-step toward board membership.

The current board recently appointed him as a lay member of the school budget committee to replace Jack Boatwright, who resigned citing time pressures.