As Bob Hallahan’s eight years on the Oak Harbor School Board approach their epilogue, Josh MacLean and Fred Wilmot prepare to take his Position 3 seat on the board.

For both candidates, this is the second time they’re trying to join the board. MacLean applied to replace Erik Mann, who vacated his role in December 2022, eventually losing to Sharon Jensen, while Wilmot lost to Jessica Aws in the 2019 election.

MacLean works as a materials management analyst at Skagit Valley Hospital, and has professional experience in data analytics, which would allow him to have a deep understanding of reports presented to the board. On top of that, he would bring the perspective of a father, he wrote in an email.

He has five children in elementary school — a set of triplets and a set of twins. He said the current board has few members with school-aged children, while he will still have children in the district at reelection time.

“We have educators on the board, and while this is an important voice, I think the parents’ voice is somewhat lost.” The board, he added, should represent parents as well.

MacLean described himself as a passionate advocate for students. He wrote he has actively campaigned for the recent school bonds, has been involved with book fairs and has attended school board meetings over the past year.

MacLean wrote in an email that the board should always focus on the students when making any decision, and acknowledged the district has important challenges ahead — such as the construction of two new school buildings, a growing community, the need to improve proficiency in core subjects like math and English, and a budget tightened by the end of COVID-19 funds.

To him, the best approach to these issues is focusing on individual students.

Wilmot is a retired Navy captain who has served for 28 years, and was the first pilot to fly a Prowler into Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. Throughout his career, he has been involved with youths and education in different ways — working as an instructor at the Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps and contributing to the development of the NJROTC textbook, teaching at the Department of Defense Dependent Schools, coaching baseball and football players, and contributing to the Oak Harbor School District’s curriculum committee.

Wilmot’s priorities are grouped in what he called a “Guiding Star Education Plan,” which includes five points — transparency and trust; focusing on science, technology, arts, engineering, mathematics, reading, writing, history and financial literacy; keeping parents involved; addressing the mental health of students; and spending funds responsibly.

Wilmot expressed concern for students’ poor reading proficiency, as he has come across many high schoolers with the reading skills of a fifth grader. He said the district needs to focus on core subjects, and believes teaching critical race theory and gender identity takes resources and teaching time away from these subjects.

He believes schools are indoctrinating children, particularly when it comes to gender identity, and is an advocate for increased parental involvement with the school and their children. He believes schools should disclose an underaged student’s gender identity to parents, regardless of the student’s approval or disapproval.

“It’s not the school or the government that can keep secrets from the parents,” he said.

Wilmot also intends to address the students’ mental health, referencing a Whidbey News-Times article about depression statistics in schools. He finds resources to be insufficient, and believes there should be more counselors. Similarly, the district lacks the resources to better support special needs students, he said.

Though MacLean said it’s unfortunate that English and math test scores have dropped in the district after the pandemic, he acknowledged that the district is above the country average.

“We should take note and encourage any new approaches that are having a great impact on student learning,” he wrote.

MacLean has personally experienced the challenges of being a parent of a special needs child in the Oak Harbor School District.

“The response to our needs was very uneven,” he wrote. “There was some pushback and we had some unfortunate experiences with testing.”

Though MacLean said they found an educator that fit their needs, it was only for one year as the contract was not renewed.

As a board member, he would take a close look at opportunities to better support families with special needs children, “even without increasing expenses,” he wrote.

MacLean was an active supporter of the school bonds. Though he expressed his appreciation for the funding that Sen. Ron Muzzall secured to build two new school buildings, he said there is still a need as many children will continue to attend school in portable classrooms due to overcrowding.

“Bond measures are how schools are built, the schools that are being replaced were both over 50 years old and were in dire need of replacement,” MacLean wrote. “To look ahead, we need to think about how we plan for the next schools that will need to be replaced.”

On top of his educational and leadership experiences, Wilmot has managed million dollar budgets.

Wilmot, who is fiscally conservative, said he would advocate for more transparency with the voters and spending funds more wisely. He believes the bonds failed because the school failed to justify requesting such a large amount of money, which he believes was more than actually necessary. Taxpayers, as stated on his website, needed a detailed explanation of why it was needed and how it was going to be used.

When asked about the ongoing public school employees contract negotiations, Wilmot said the district should look at what other districts are paying their employees, an opinion shared by MacLean. He hopes negotiations will lead to satisfactory results for the employees without costing the district an excessive amount of money.

A hot topic in the last school year was “The Laramie Project” — a play that tells the real story of a gay student who was murdered 25 years ago — that Oak Harbor High School Principal Nathan Salisbury did not allow students to perform as it wasn’t “balanced and representative of the student voice” and “age and school appropriate.”

Wilmot agrees with the principal’s decision. MacLean said he could not recall the details of the controversy, but said the decision not to run a play should be based on previous decisions on other plays the students have asked to perform, and encourages students to be as active as possible.

Fred Wilmot