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Mark A. Neish is challenging incumbents Tom Carlson and John W. Lewandowski to serve the district, which has more than 12,000 students in 16 traditional schools and 1,600 employees.

Carlson says he has unfinished business he wants to address in the next four years, including raising Marana’s graduation rate, now at 88 percent, and raising the attendance rate, currently at 94 percent.

Neish is looking to bring a new perspective to the board, to help save an ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ education system he said is “in grave danger of failing.â€�

“I was in Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, North Carolina, Idaho and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ in the school business, and I’ve seen other things and I think that makes me a valuable candidate and a valuable asset to the school board, because I am not locked into just what ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ does,â€� Neish said.

Lewandowski wants to use his experience on the board to keep the district moving forward on the path it’s on.

“Everything we do is focused on the kids. We look at the outcome of what we want for students and we build back from there,� Lewandowski said. “I visit every school every year so I can talk to staff and talk to students and get their input.�

CHALLENGES

For Carlson, student achievement is the greatest challenge, which he said stems from underserved populations. He said the issue of poverty in school districts “is not an easy nut to crack� and it comes down to smaller things, like making sure teachers and students have close, strong relationships. He’s made focusing on underserved populations his top priority.

“That’s not something where we can put a policy in place, so there are a number of efforts along those lines that we are implementing and need to implement with some more fidelity to reach those communities,� Carlson said.

Hiring teachers and faculty is the biggest challenge facing the district for Neish, as well as proper funding from the state.

“Finance has a ripple effect, and the big ripple effect is hiring good people and keeping good people,� said Neish, who plans to put pressure on state lawmakers and the Department of Education to get more funding for Marana schools if elected.

Lewandowski said the biggest challenge is the enrollment decline in the district’s southern schools, although schools in the northern and central parts of the district are growing, as well as inconsistent funding from the state.

“We’re at the mercy of the Legislature, as every district is, so we don’t know what’s going to happen until January or February for the following year,� Lewandowski said.

His top priority is modernizing campuses and ensuring equity among schools to make sure every student gets the same opportunities.

SCHOOL GRADES

Three of Marana’s 16 schools received grades of ‘D’ from the state for the 2017-18 school year — Roadrunner Elementary, Tortolita Middle and Marana High.

For Carlson, the grades come back to aiding underserved populations, but he also said the state keeps “moving the goalposts� for standardized tests.

“What we’ve been doing rather than try to react and go overboard and go, ‘Holy cow, we need to overhaul,’ we’ve been focusing on no, it’s going to get better. At some point the state has to stabilize and stop fiddling around with these measurement systems, and we think when they finally do, then the slow, steady progress we’ve been making is going to bear fruit,� Carlson said.

Neish said the real issue is not the grades, but that the tests used by the state do not adequately measure what students know. He would rather see different tests used, like the ACT, or to measure student success by what the graduates are doing five years after graduation.

“Quite frankly, that’s not my job, that’s the administration’s job to figure out what happened,� Neish said.

Lewandowski said the board has meetings and public hearings scheduled to plan how to improve performance, but also said the district wants to focus on producing graduates that are more than just a test score.

“We’re going to work very hard because I don’t like to have any schools at that level. By December we should have plans made and approved,� Lewandowski said. “We’re also implementing the same types of plans at all of our schools, because if you’re an ‘A’ school … how do you stay an ‘A’ school?�