HOUGHTON — Four candidates are running for two six-year terms on the Houghton-Portage Township Schools board. 

Brad Baltensperger, Nels Christopherson, Jason Evans and Mike Salmi are each running for a six-year term. Baltensperger, Christopherson and Salmi currently sit on the board; Salmi is the most recent arrival, having been appointed in 2023. 

Candidates spoke on issues including the district’s $23 million bond proposal on the November ballot, which would include building additional classroom space at the elementary school and modernizing both district buildings.

Brad Baltensperger

Baltensperger, a research professor of geography and education at Michigan Technological University, is a trustee on the board, to which he was first elected in 1988. 

“I feel like I’ve got a sense of what the community wants and a sense of what’s important in education, and I’ve got a pretty good handle on what’s going on elsewhere in the state, and that informs, I think, a lot of my decisions,” he said. “Too often, school boards and school board members try to invent the wheel, but there’s lots of wheels out there, and I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on those wheels.”

Opponents of the bond proposal have pointed to what they feel is an over-reliance on school of choice students; they make up about 37% of the district’s enrollment. Baltensperger said the number of school-of-choice students is a reflection of the good job administrations, teachers and staff are doing for the district. School of choice was introduced with the passage of Proposal A in 1994; prior to that, parents who wanted to enroll their children out of district had to pay tuition.

“On the one hand, there’s the argument that we have a really good set of programs, so people want to send their kids to us,” he said. “On the other hand, we’ve got a community that supports us — that is Houghton-Portage Township — and so we have to be careful that we’re not shortchanging our own citizens and our own children because we’re providing a service to other students. So I think that’s an ongoing challenge that we’re going to need to be looking at.”

Baltensperger said in addition to the pressures put on district facilities by rising enrollment, the nearly 60-year-old elementary school building is also reaching the point where it needs to be modernized. The classrooms are smaller than what is now standard, he said, leaving fewer spaces to do small group work, among other issues. 

Like other districts, Houghton received COVID funding that helped with additions such as bringing in social workers. Baltensperger said the board will look at ways of continuing programs. That can come with tradeoffs, he said, such as having larger class sizes, which would require spending more funds on paraprofessionals to assist teachers. The complexity of budgeting can be helped by districts such as Houghton that have built up healthy fund balances. 

“If there’s something you really need to do, you can still do it at least for a few years, always watching out for that bottom line,” he said.

Asked for the thing he’s proudest of from his time on the board, Baltensperger said it’s the consensus everyone in the district has reached of setting high expectations. 

“That doesn’t mean that expectations are the same for every kid, but it means we believe that kids can do a good job, that they can learn well, and that shows up in so many ways,” he said. 

He pointed to the set of Advanced Placement classes and specialized classes for business or career and technical education. The district has also benefited from the system in place supported by teachers to stop disciplinary problems from emerging. 

Baltensperger said voters should choose him because of his experience, perspective and his practice of using data to make the best decisions.

“If there’s a proposal to do X, do we have evidence that that will work? What does the cost look like relative to the benefit?” he said. “I think I’m a pretty pragmatic decision maker, and I guess that partly comes from experience. It comes from the colleagues I work with. It comes from the administrators I’m around, it comes from my experience with the Michigan Association of School Boards. I think I don’t jump into decisions, but I figure out what’s best for the district.”

Nels Christopherson

Christopherson, who serves as treasurer, has been on the board since 1991. He also sits on the Copper Country Intermediate School District Board.

Christopherson said he says being on the board as a form of “paying your civic rent” to benefit the community. He is running for another term partially to see the district’s bond proposal reach completion.

“That’s one of my inspirations here is to see this extra addition and improvement in the facilities and in how we teach,” he said. “…Even at my advanced age, I still want to be a part of it, and I want to see this happen.”

Christopherson said his priorities would be to maintain what he sees as an excellent school system. He praised Superintendent Anders Hill, who he said “has been doing a great job in all respects.” The district’s recent awards have attested to its quality, he said, such as Houghton Elementary School’s federal recognition as a Blue Ribbon School and all schools in the district ranking in the top 3% of Michigan schools in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

One of the things he’s most pleased with from his tenure is the hiring of the superintendents, along with the quality of the teachers who have come in. 

“To me, it’s like the teachers, the administrators, etc., are doing their job, meaning we on the board are doing our job by providing for them to be able to do what they do,” he said. 

The district capped enrollment for some grade levels last year due to overcrowding, but rolled back the restrictions this year. Christopherson said the additional enrollment from school of choice has been a positive development for the district, bringing in diversity and a number of students that allows the district to add more programs and athletic activities. While the out-of-district students do not provide taxes toward capital projects, they do bring the state foundation grant with them for operating expenses — $9,608 per pupil.

“It allows us to actually offer a bigger program, and it’s better for the local students to be having this larger population,” he said. “We’d have been restricted in many ways if we didn’t have the number of students coming in from the outside.”

Christopherson said given that the district’s finances are in good shape, the district wold try to continue programs it had instituted through COVID funding. 

“When that COVID money, or any kind of one-time grant money comes along, it ends, and then you have to start thinking, ‘Well, are we going to continue this or not?'” he said. “We’re in the position where we can continue a lot of these things.”

Christopherson said voters should choose him because of his experience and lack of an agenda. He’s pleased with the recent additions to district staff, such as the school resource officer and the mental health supports.

“The biggest thing I could say is that we maintain what we’ve been doing, because it’s been evidenced by our performance that we are doing the right thing,” he said. 

Jason Evans

Evans, a staff pharmacist at Aspirus’s Houghton and Laurium clinics, has lived in the district for 15 years. Although he’s wanted to run for the school board for years he held off to avoid a conflict of interest. His wife, who was a teacher in the district, now works at Michigan Tech. 

He has two children still in the district, and two who already graduated as valedictorians. 

“The term is for six years, and that would be the same amount of time that my youngest would be in the school district,” he said. “So I have a vested interest, very involved with the school, with all those different extracurriculars and classes and fundraisers.”

His top priority will be keeping the community more informed about issues members of the public present to the board; while the board meeting minutes mention the people who comment, they do not give a topic.

Evans would also like to see more discourse and active discussion during school board meetings to evaluate the positives and negatives. 

“I think there needs to be a little bit of that and a little bit different opinion to make a better decision,” he said. 

Another priority would be expanding community access to the swimming pool in the high school building. 

Evans also called for more common-sense policies and procedures to avoid conflicts of interest.

The checks and balances there, he said, could provide better leadership, hiring policies and strategic planning. 

“Obviously, we’re all in this for the kids, to make sure that we’re providing a wonderful product and getting them a good start in life, whether it be through trades, through college, whatever their path is,” he said. 

Asked how he would evaluate which programs launched through COVID-era funding to continue, he said he would need to get more information first.

“There’d be a lot of learning, but by the same token I’d be committed, because I have kids here, my wife graduated from Houghton … I have a wide variety of experiences at the school.”

While Evans said he had not decided his vote yet on the school bond issue, he said he would like to see more answers to the questions posed by Scott MacInnes, Houghton’s former city manager and the leader of a citizen group opposing the bond issue. He would also like to explore the idea of school-of-choice families making some sort of financial payment to the district, even if only a small one.  

“It’s over a third of our student population,” he said. “I think the taxpayers would want to see those people having some sort of financial skin in the game.”

Evans said voters should also consider him based on his involvement with the district, and the addition of a different viewpoint to the board.

“I have nieces and nephews that go here as well,” he said. “My sister and brother-in-law are teachers here, and my dad was a teacher, so I have a lot of experience with being involved with the schools.”

Mike Salmi

Salmi, the board secretary, was appointed last year to replace Rob Fay, now the district’s athletic director. 

His four children have all come through Houghton — two now in college, and two still in the district. Salmi said his first year on the board has allowed him to become comfortable as a member of the board, observing the proceedings, offering his opinion and listening to the community.

“It’s a role I take seriously … I enjoy the school board, and I think it’s an important function of a community to have adults willing to do this,” he said. 

If elected to a full term, one of his priorities includes advocating for the importance of reading to children at a young age, both in school and at home. He would also 

“We cannot put the genie back in the bottle but perhaps we can better live with it, recognize it as the tool that it is,” he said. “But the social media, if there’s bullying, if there’s just opinions, if it’s comparison, that can be very harmful.”

He said it could also inspire students if the district added a section on its website where alumni provide updates on what they’ve done since graduating, whether it’s starting a business or working halfway across the world. 

“I think that we do facilitate students taking those opportunities and having the self-confidence to pursue them because of all the extracurriculars we offer,” he said. 

Salmi backed the bond issue; the construction of classroom space for kindergarten and young 5s makes sense, he said, both for space issues and also recognizing the difference between those ages and a fifth-grader. 

Residents have gotten “a good bang for their tax dollar,” Salmi said, pointing to a recent U.S. News & World Report ranking listing Houghton High School as being in the top 1.5% nationally for science, technology, engineering and math high schools. He also approved of other benefits of the millage, such as HVAC improvements, security upgrades and parking lot expansion, along with classroom upgrades at the middle/high school. 

“Outside of colleges, it promotes good (vocational education), because we can build up more in the metal shop, more in the wood shop,” he said. “Anything you can do to enhance that education for every student will benefit from this millage.”

Salmi said the issue of capping enrollment at grade levels was something that would have to be determined at the board level. He noted Houghton County’s uptick in population in the last census, and noted the continued growth of Michigan Tech would also bring in more faculty and families.

“If we’re slowly growing, that’s a good thing,” he said. “I want to be a part of that community in anticipating, too, what we can offer as a district.”

Salmi said district residents should vote for him in November because of his ties to parents and administrators, his comfort in talking to the public about issues, and his desire for transparency on the board. 

“It needs to be out there because the school is an extension of the community that only exists in the state it is because of the overwhelming support that the community has provided to this district in the past,” he said.