Four file for school board

Four candidates are running for the three open Whitefish School Board trustee seats up for election in May.

Current Trustees Heather Vrentas and Shannon Hanson, who was appointed to the board after Dave Fern left for the Montana Legislature, are running for re-election. Katie Clarke and Catherine Catina also submitted applications.

Board chairman Shawn Watts, who was first elected in 2011, did not apply for re-election.

Vrentas was also first elected in 2011 and is seeking her third term on the board. Vrentas has lived in Whitefish for more than two decades.

Hanson was selected in January to fill out the term left open when Fern resigned. Hanson served two previous terms on the school board before losing his bid for re-election to the board in 2012. He was selected to serve as vice chairman of the board in his second term.

Clarke also applied for Fern’s open seat, and has a variety of experience in education, first teaching marketing and DECA in the Cherry Creek School District in Colorado before teaching strategic communication at Hawaii Pacific University. She also taught at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and volunteered in the Corvallis School District. Outside of education, Clarke also served as a director on the hospital foundation board at Marcus Daly Hospital in Hamilton.

Catina has children in the Whitefish School District and served for 26 years as a colonel in the U.S. Army.

The election is May 2.