SARANAC LAKE — Three Saranac Lake Central School District board members are running for reelection unopposed on the May 16 ballot.

Candidates Mike Martin, Joe Henderson and Tori Thurston all spoke highly of their fellow board members, each saying their different backgrounds and opinions complement and contribute to the board’s discussion.

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Martin

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Martin was appointed to the board in December to fill a vacant seat left by former board President Aurora White, who resigned in November during a board meeting following a “contentious” executive session in October.

Martin waged a write-in campaign in last year’s election, gaining quick support but not getting enough votes to earn a seat. Now, he’s running again for a full term.

“It was a tough time to come on the board,” Martin said.

White resigned, members of the public were speaking out against the dismissal of a volleyball coach, suspension of a student athlete and bringing up allegations of racism within the school.

Martin said he learned a lot about confidentiality. The school is an employer, he said, which means there are a lot of things the board cannot speak on openly because they are not public information, which he did not realize.

He had opinions before getting on the board but said he did not speak much then, because he knew he didn’t have all the information. After getting on the board he learned some things he was not privy to, but also said, “I didn’t learn a lot of new information” and his opinions stayed the same.

He said he likes that board members have different views. He said not all their votes are unanimous and they can still get along afterwards.

“We can agree to disagree,” Martin said.

“I really would like for people to bubble in next to all three of our names,” Martin said of the election.

He is concerned by the proliferation of “swatting” calls — hoax calls of mass violence — at regional schools last month, in the week after deadly school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. He said he is glad for the active shooter training regional law enforcement did at the high school earlier this month. But he added that with threats of violence, both real and fabricated, they need new answers, as all school districts do now.

Martin said the district has a good foundation for several of the issues schools are facing. He wants to continue supporting the Community Schools program, led by Erika Bezio. He said this program is a “leader in the state” and that other schools are reaching out to Bezio for advice on starting their own programs.

He also said the district’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee was one of the first in the state — organized before the state required every district to have one.

As a contractor by trade, Martin is keeping an eye on expenses on the buildings and grounds sides of things. As bids are coming in for projects, he wants to see the plans, the prices and the documents, which he said “is not necessarily something the school board looks at.”

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Henderson

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Henderson is running for a second term on the board. A former middle school teacher, he said he sees being on the board as giving back to the community.

He sees a host of social and economic issues that the district is facing. He said while the schools can do a lot to address these issues, it can’t solve them all on its own.

“Oftentimes we ask schools to solve larger social problems,” Henderson said. “Schools can only do so much.”

He feels it is unfair to put that on educators.

The biggest issue he sees right now is declining enrollment, which is related to issues they have no control over — economic and housing crises.

When young families move away, he said that has financial and programming implications for the district. He said they need to have long-term budgets that address this declining enrollment.

“If you have fewer students, you have fewer staff,” he said.

Staffing is the largest part of the budget, making up almost three quarters of the budget that will be put to voters on May 16.

But Henderson also feels the district’s DEI policy, which he helped write, can potentially help reverse the enrollment decline by making schools more welcoming and inclusive.

“The U.S. is becoming a more diverse place. Our schools have to be welcoming to a diverse audience,” Henderson said. “If we want people to move here, they have to sense that they belong.”

He said they have to reflect that in staffing and programming.

He is also concerned by how common school violence has become.

Henderson said hardened doors and safe rooms are not the answer, that it’s mental health and social services that can stop violence before it happens. He said the district has been putting more money into those areas in recent years since the start of the pandemic, funding more counseling and the Community Schools program.

“But there’s a larger issue in our society that our society refuses to deal with, and that’s gun-based violence,” Henderson added.

One of the things Henderson is most proud of is his and Thurston’s work to expand free school lunches to more students through a test-run program expansion this year. He said this opened up the program to a few dozen new families. It’s an expensive endeavor, but worth it, he felt.

Henderson said he got reduced lunches as a kid, so he knows how important that can be. Still, he believes all school lunches should be free and is hoping the state will respond to advocacy to fund universal free lunches.

“I just believe no one should have to pay for a school lunch,” Henderson said.

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Thurston

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Thurston was elected to the school board in last May. She said it’s been an “interesting” year.

“I saw a little bit of everything — good, bad, ugly,” Thurston said. “At the same time I realized that you really can make a difference.”

She said she is interested in policy and she dove right into it, saying she can never learn enough.

“I’ve read more in the last year than I had since college,” Thurston said.

A couple months ago, she attended the New York State School Boards Association’s annual business meeting as a voting delegate for Saranac Lake and came back to the board with a detailed summary of what was discussed and voted on there. She was visibly excited about getting involved in school issues at the state level.

She said when she and Henderson went down to Albany in January to lobby for school lunch funding she learned that most districts “north of the Thruway” don’t participate on the state level, despite many state’s decisions affecting these more rural districts more than others.

She said it “became clear” that they needed to be involved.

“We met with (state Senator) Dan Stec and (Assemblyman) Billy Jones and they actually listened,” Thurston said. “I think the biggest thing is seeing that I could actually make a difference. It’s not easy. It’s stressful.

“I think a lot of people, and I was one of them, we want to complain about the district … but if you’re not going to do anything about it … I had to do something about it,” she added. “And I feel like I am making a difference.”

She said she represents the needs of blue-collar families to the board. Everyone wants a utopia, she said, but “the district’s finances are finite.”

Sometimes, she said districts will vote to go over the property tax cap, limiting how much they can raise taxes from year-to-year. That is something that is out of the question for her. She said it is important for them to keep the tax levy under the cap — even as the price of everything rises — because taxpayers are paying more for everything, too.

“I think we need to tighten our belts as best we can and make sure we’re using our resources as wisely as we can,” Thurston said.

She said the discussions in the past few months about racism, suspensions, dismissals and what the board can say in public session have been difficult.

“It was hard. It was really hard,” Thurston said. “The hardest part is we want to be open and we want to say ‘This is how this decision was made.’ But at the same time … when you have federal and state policy saying that by law, we can’t say certain things in public … it is frustrating.”

There were many mornings she woke up and didn’t want to see her name in the paper.

“But I stand behind my decisions. I stand behind the things that I stood up for,” Thurston said. “I hope the general public knows that if they were ever in a situation where their confidentiality was on the chopping block, that I would back up their confidentiality as well.”

She said she put in a lot of thought and time about each of these situations.

“Aurora spent a lot of time and gave a lot of herself to the board and I think we all need to be grateful for that,” Thurston said. “Because, let’s be honest. The three of us are running unopposed because nobody else is stepping up.”

On May 16, district voters will vote on these three candidates, as well as the school budget and any propositions the district makes.