Four candidates vie for two seats on Tanque Verde school board

Beth Peterson

Beth Peterson, currently the board president, told the Star she is running for re-election to continue the goals the current board has set for 2030.

“I feel like there's so much work that we've been successful with, but we continue to have more to do,” she said. Some of these goals include reaching an 80% student passing rate on state assessments and providing tailored opportunities that match individual student strengths and post-graduation goals.

She said she also would like the board to study where graduates end up after high school to better prepare current students for the future.

“I would very much like us as well to look at our students as they move through college and what they do post high school to say that our methodology is working, that we have prepared our students,” she said.

A longtime Tucson resident, Peterson currently works as a software engineer. She and her husband raised their children in the Tanque Verde area, which she said helped inspire her to run in 2022.

“My experiences working on parent associations led to my interest in the board,” she said. “I feel like public education is so important to a thriving community.”

Peterson also said that, as an engineer, she sees AI as “fascinating,” but says that in the K-12 realm, there needs to be a balance between complete understanding of educational material and using AI as a tool to be prepared for the future.

“From a student learning perspective, it's really important that we have savvy consumers,” she said. “AI will tell you ‘That's so smart of you. What a great question!’ It'll act like it's your best friend, and it will give you an answer that it's very confident about that could be wrong.”

As a “data-driven go-getter,” Peterson said she hopes to continue working with the current board to complete the goals they’ve focused on for the past four years.

Peterson holds a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona.

Erik Nystrom

Erik Nystrom, a former intelligence officer at Fort Huachuca and now the chief financial officer at Pima Medical Institute, said he believes his experience with finances and marketing can be a useful asset to the current governing board.

“While I may not be a professional educator, I do work very closely with a lot of them and help them manage the resources that they have, and to get the resources that they need,” he said.

Nystrom, a write-in candidate, admires how much of the student body comes from out of district, but does not send his two children to TVUSD schools “partially due to the slipping outcomes we see in TVUSD among other personal reasons,” he said.

He said he wants “to be a proactive voice on the board to ensure excellence, protect school choice and help find solutions for the budgetary and outcome issues that are building in the district.”

“This is a place that people want to come,” he said. “I want to make sure that that's preserved and protected.”

If elected, Nystrom would like to raise classroom spending and see math scores at the high school level increase.

“I'm coming in to try to make sure that we can maintain the awesome outcomes that we do have,” he said. He'd also like to see the governing board improve its relationships with families who live within district boundaries.

“I think it's a couple hundred that have left to go to other places, and so while people are coming in from other districts to Tanque Verde, I want to make sure that the kids and families who live within the district also see it as a viable, solid option,” he said.

Nystrom said AI can be a useful tool for teachers designing curriculum and lessons, but wants to see students taught how to use it responsibly.

“I do see it as an integral part of something that's not going away,” he said. “Teaching responsible management (and) making sure it's not used for cheating,” are important pieces of policy he'd like the governing board to oversee, he said.

Nystrom holds a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Central Washington University.

Piper Jordan

Piper Jordan, a former Tanque Verde teacher and current parent, told the Star she is running to add a recent educator's perspective to the governing board.

Jordan has about 15 years of teaching experience, two of which were at TVUSD, and holds a bachelor's degree in art education from Daemen College and a master's degree in fine arts from Rochester Institute of Technology. She said during the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, teachers “were encouraged to resign if they were not willing to give 110% every single day,” something that left many staffers feeling unseen.

“It really left a sour taste in teachers' mouths. It was demoralizing, and teacher retention is one of the most important things that the district can do for its students,” she said. “Encouraging teachers to resign is not it. So at that point, I knew that something needed to change.”

She says if elected to the governing board, her main priority would be increasing staff numbers.

“I think that teachers need more support in the classroom, and that is not just budgetary,” she said. “I really want to push for enough staffing and the correct staffing in schools.”

She hopes to see the district hire a behavioral specialist, a registered nurse at every school and special education paraprofessionals.

She said she would also like to see an expansion of career and technical education programs to lower grade levels.

“We are really lucky because we already have some amazing programs like agriculture at the high school (level),” she said.

Jordan said “bringing some of those programs down and getting kids interested in those programs before high school could be a draw” for elementary schools, which don't have the waitlists that the district's middle and high schools have.

Jordan believes AI can be used productively, but should be “strictly limited” in schools.

“There's really no reason for kids to be engaged with AI when they're at school with real people,” she said. “There are some instances, maybe with organizational stuff, that AI could be helpful to students. But as of right now, our policy is just that AI is not used unless expressly allowed by the school.”

If elected, she would want to talk more with other local districts' school boards to “try to come up with a solution that allows kids to use AI effectively and ethically.”

Jordan hopes that if she's elected, she can help bridge the gap between the community and the board, which she called a “little disconnected.”

“In my first 90 days, if I'm elected, I would like to visit each classroom. When I was teaching, not one board member ever came to my classroom or asked how things were going,” she said. “I think if you are making decisions for people, they deserve a conversation.”

Thomas Trask

Thomas Trask, a retired United States Air Force officer and current board clerk, told the Star in an email interview that he is running for re-election because “the work of the last four years is not finished.”

“Over the past four years this Board moved from reacting to leading,” Trask said. “We built a shared culture and a long-term strategic plan.”

One of his accomplishments is leading the district’s Vision, Mission, Values and Goals statement revision, he said.

“These begin with this standard: ‘Equip graduates for mastery, founded upon excellence and integrity.’ That standard guides the District's culture and work, and is the focus of each agenda item,” he said in the email.

His top three priorities if re-elected include ensuring approved curriculum is improving student learning, ensuring every dollar spent shows a return for students and including the Tanque Verde community in board decisions, he said.

“We began our review with the science and social studies programs at the elementary and junior high levels, and we ensured teachers had the support they need to implement the improved instruction materials. We have more to do. Beginning soon is an examination of the English Language Arts program, with math to follow soon thereafter,” he said in an email. “I am asking voters to return a team that has already proven track record.”

Trask said when it comes to AI in K-12 education, students must still learn to “read, write, calculate, think and show their own work.”

“No tool replaces that,” he said. He believes teachers can use it to help ease lesson planning, but that students should learn how AI can help and what its limits are.

“There is a need for balance in the use of AI in education and this integration requires adult human judgment first,” he said in an email. “We should keep human teaching at the core of education; adopt only what improves learning at a defensible cost; and never outsource integrity.”