A graphic of Britteny Cioni-Haywood (left) on April 14, 2026 and David Noon (right) on Feb. 19, 2026. (Jamie Diep/KTOO)
As the candidate filing deadline approaches, the race for Juneau’s two open school board seats appears to be uncontested so far. Anyone else interested in running has until Monday afternoon to file.
As of Thursday afternoon, only incumbents Britteny Cioni-Haywood and David Noon have filed to run.
Lon Garrison encourages other people in Juneau to run. He is the recently retired executive director for the Association of Alaska School Boards.
“School boards have been looked at and have been deemed, like, one of the most essential and basic pieces of our democratic system,” he said. “And it’s a great way to learn how that works, and to have an effect on the future of our state and our country in terms of trying to provide a great public education for all our kids.”
Garrison isn’t surprised by the lack of candidates running for school board though. He said in the past 15 to 20 years, it’s harder to find people to step up. Garrison served on the Sitka School Board for more than eight years prior to joining the statewide association. It’s a hard job, he said, but it’s still worth it to serve.
“School boards have to make sometimes some really horrible choices and decisions that they don’t like to make,” he said. “But in order to keep the system running, those often have to be made, and it gets to be kind of a thankless job.”
Juneau school board incumbents Cioni-Haywood and Noon were both elected in 2023. In their first term, they had to grapple with a nearly $10 million deficit that led the district to close and consolidate schools. This year, the board also navigated tense contract negotiations with the district’s teachers union, which escalated to the union voting to authorize a strike.
If no one else files to run, it would be the first uncontested school board race since 2022. Former school board members Deedie Sorensen and Emil Mackey were re-elected that year.
In 2024, six candidates ran for three school board seats.
The deadline to file as a candidate for the municipal election is Monday, July 27 at 4:30 p.m. School board members serve for three-year terms. The deadline to file as a write-in candidate is Sept. 29. Only one candidate in nearly three decades – Will Muldoon in 2021 – successfully ran a write-in campaign for school board.
For the Juneau Assembly, six candidates have so far filed to run for three seats. As of Thursday afternoon, one of those is uncontested.
The last day to vote in Juneau’s municipal election is Oct. 6.
