It’s election season, and in Haines five candidates are running for four open seats on the School Board. The race is one of the first contested elections for school board in recent years. Today we hear from Brian Clay, who is running for re-election.

Brian Clay is a lifelong resident of Haines, and graduated from high school here in 1982. His daughter also attended, and his granddaughter is currently in the third grade. For the past 25 years, he’s worked as a counter technician at BigFoot Auto Service. He has served on the school board for the past 18 years. 

Brian Clay (Corinne Smith/KHNS)

“There’s always something different on the menu,” Clay said. “Some stuff is always the same, but there’s always changes, but I enjoy it. And it’s a great benefit.”

He’s one of seven school board members, and running for another three-year term. 

“You make tough decisions when they have to be made. But if you have a good board, we work well together. And we’ve done a lot in the 18 years I’ve been on there. We’ve built a new school. And we stayed open during a pandemic.”

Clay says managing to keep Haines schools open and in-person last year during the pandemic was a major accomplishment. He says the board worked with the superintendent and staff to develop a plan, reviewed recommendations and met monthly on updates and changes needed.

“Last year was a slow start. We did a couple days a week for the first couple of weeks, then we decided to go to the full five days. And we did that, and then we slowly but surely started putting activities back in. And the second half of the year, we were doing activities and traveling.”

He says the goal is to continue with the measured approach this year. And he also wants to work on boosting state funding for the district.

“Making it through this without any illness or sickness this year,” Clay said. “And continue to move forward, we have got to move forward. And hopefully we can get adequate funding from the state. I think that’s the big one. We don’t get inflation proof and our budget is flat funded, but it doesn’t include any inflation.”

That will depend on the Alaska legislature to provide state funding. Clay said he’d also like to expand vocational programs, if funding allows. 

“Construction and trading, education, automotive, that kind of stuff. There’s some areas in there that we need to improve, make it a little more robust, offer some different courses.”

Clay has also served for over 25 years with the Haines Fire Department. He served as the chief until 2018, when he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence. He ended up being fined $1,100 and resigned as chief but remains an active volunteer firefighter. He declined to talk about it but said anyone with questions could ask him personally.

Brian Clay is one of five candidates running for four open seats on the Haines School Board. He will face Shannon Dryden, Kevin Shove, Michael Wald and Jonathan Wray in the election on October 5.