CEDAR CITY — In the Iron County School District Board of Education’s District 5 race, Billy Davis and Tiffiney Christiansen are vying for the seat currently occupied by board president Michelle Lambert, who isn’t seeking reelection.
That means the Iron County school board will have at least three and possibly four new faces come January when the new members are sworn in. At that point, the board will shift from five members to seven, a mandatory change triggered by the district having reached the threshold of 10,000 enrolled students.
But in each of Iron County’s two newly created school board districts (numbered 6 and 7), only one candidate filed for office earlier this year. Thus, Lauren Lewis in District 6 and Megen Ralphs in District 7 are each assured of winning their respective races unopposed.
That leaves the two remaining seats up for reelection, the one being sought by Davis and Christiansen and the District 4 seat occupied by incumbent Dale Brinkerhoff, who is being challenged by Stephanie Hill.
Three of the four candidates in school board Districts 4 and 5 recently appeared in a public debate sponsored by SUU’s Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics and Public Service. Only Brinkerhoff was not in attendance. To watch the video of the event, which was streamed live on Facebook, click here.
Prior to that debate last week, Cedar City News spoke to each of the candidates by phone and asked them about their campaigns.
Both Christiansen and Davis spoke of the challenges associated with anticipated population growth.
“Any time there is growth in a community, you’re going to end up with lots of difficult and complex issues to solve,” Christiansen said. “I’ve been asked a lot about this. The first thing that’s going to be stressed is your budget.”
“Recently, as you know, we just got a bond approved, which was fantastic, because Lance (Hatch) has done a really great job educating the community on what the bond will be used for,” she added.
Christiansen said she has spent time knocking on doors and asking area residents for their input regarding growth projections and where future schools should be built.
“It’s not easy to close a school like East (Elementary) and then not rebuild anything there,” she said. “However, I think people want us to be fiscally responsible with the budget. So I think we would need to really take a good hard look at enrollment trends, population growth, and see where it really (should be) located.”
Busing students from one area to another is an option, of course, but Christiansen said district transportation officials recently stated that their buses travel more than 5,000 miles every school day, not counting field trips, sports contests and extracurricular activities.
“We have a lot of gas being used, so if we’re going to be busing more students, we need to figure out what that’s going to look like,” she said. I think it’s gonna take some really good collaboration from the board from the community,”
Davis shared similar feelings during his interview, saying that growth is a “huge issue” for the school district.
“They’ve had to go around and redraw some boundaries and move kids to schools where there’s a little bit more room, and a lot of the schools are cramped,” he said.
“We’re behind the eight ball,” he added.
“And what we’re going to do is we’re just going to rebuild a school, instead of getting a new school and maybe still making use of the old school for some time,” Davis said, referring to Cedar City’s East Elementary.
Moving forward, he said one of the solutions would be to try and get a new school sooner than later and put it on a path of growth.
“We know there was a lot of emotional attachment to East Elementary by those that have attended there and those that teach there,” he said. “I understand that and I feel for those people, but I know that we really do need to be looking towards the future and growth.”
Both Christiansen and Davis expressed appreciation for the positive things happening within Iron District schools and shared their optimism regarding the district’s future.
Christiansen said she appreciates how each school’s professional learning communities are working collaboratively to improve instructional outcomes.
“The PLCs are so powerful, because teachers are educating each other,” she said. “They’re sharing knowledge about what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. I went to a few of them and I was blown away at how powerful they were. It was so exciting to see teachers sharing and saying, ‘Yeah, you just call me and I’ll help you through that.’”
Christiansen also named a few of the many outstanding teachers she has observed working in the classroom.
“I think of Sonja Stokes out at Iron Springs, she is phenomenal. I think Jonathan Chidester, or Michele Brunson, these teachers are incredible,” Christiansen said. “And we want to keep them. We want them to want to live in Iron County and to be there for our students. They just make a huge difference in the way our kids love learning.”
Davis said he, too, appreciates the work of teachers and said that if elected, he will listen to their needs and concerns.
“I’ve sat down with a lot of teachers these last few months over the summer, and a lot of them were concerned for this upcoming year because of their class sizes,” he said. “They were concerned about not having any additional classrooms within the school to even expand to, if they actually ended up going over their maximum number of students.”
Davis also explained why he chose to run for school board.
“I love our community,” he said. “I love my country. And I know that the future of our country is dependent upon what we do with our kids: how we raise them, what they learn and what they don’t learn.”
“My reason for running was to have some effect on that, at least at a very small, local level, if possible,” he added. “School board is probably one of the most important ways I think that you have an effect and make positive change, and create successful students that will go on and keep this country great.”
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