Two of the seven seats on the Anchorage School Board are up for election April 6.

The candidates include one incumbent and two who have run before and lost.

Two say they will shake things up and take a hatchet to the budget.

Two are veteran teachers who know the inner workings of education.

And another is an Anchorage high school dropout who went on to get an education and become a child welfare advocate.

Unlike Anchorage Assembly members who each represent part of the city, School Board members are elected citywide. The races are nonpartisan.

Seat A is being vacated by Tim Steele, who has termed out of running again after being on the board since 2001. Four men are trying for his open spot.

Seat B is now held by Jeannie Mackie, who is running for re-election against one challenger.

The School Board oversees the administration of the largest school district in the state. It is in charge of an $800 million annual budget, 100 schools, 5,500 employees and 50,000 students.

SEAT A -- FOUR CANDIDATES

This four-way race is between James LaBelle, David Nees, Tommy O'Malley and Don Smith.

LaBelle, 37, dropped out of East High when he was a teen because he didn't feel accepted as a Native. He eventually completed his degree. Now he is a child welfare liaison for Cook Inlet Tribal Council. This is his third run for School Board and he has the backing of departing school board member Steele.

He offers Native and minority community connections, and a professional and personal understanding of how to reach out to the students in trouble.

Two of the other candidates are teachers. O'Malley, 54, was a 20-year kindergarten teacher in one of the district's most distressed schools, Wonder Park, before retiring last year. Nees, 53, has been teaching math at Hanshew Middle School since 1987. He would have to retire to join the School Board to avoid a conflict of interest.

O'Malley has been active in his Girdwood community for years -- in the arts, on the board of a child care center, dealing with land uses. He's a consummate volunteer. He won a highly regarded teaching award from the district last year.

He says he offers an insider's perspective on teaching in the district, what works and what doesn't. He's also an advocate for more vocational and technical training in the high schools, an idea gaining more traction in recent years as a way to keep kids engaged in school and ready for jobs, not necessarily college.

Nees says he wants more money put into classrooms and less bureaucracy. He says in his tenure he's watched the number of administrators swell with the ballooning budget while student performance continued to flail. He points to other school districts around the country that he thinks are doing more with less. But school administrators, including Superintendent Carol Comeau, say some of his calculations are incorrect.

The fourth candidate, Smith, is a political veteran, although he's been retired for some years. He was a major backer of the April 2009 tax-cap initiative that voters approved. He offers years of public office, starting in 1966 in the state Legislature. He also served on the Anchorage Assembly from 1975 to 1985.

Smith, 71, is running on a "cut-the-budget" platform, calling the allocation of district's resources wasteful, and wants to hold down property taxes. He wants to take a hatchet to the budget, also questioning if all of the district's administrative positions are necessary.

SEAT B -- TWO CANDIDATES

Mackie, 41, has been on the board a year and says the challenges the district faces are complex -- she wants to keep tackling them and is seeking re-election.

The stay-at-home mother, who grew up in Nenana, has worked in the legislative and executive branches. She has the support of at least one fellow board member, Kathleen Plunkett, who contributed to her campaign.

Her opponent is Bob Griffin, a 50-year-old retired fighter pilot. He says the district's budget should make it one of the best school districts in the country for its size. Instead, he thinks it is putting out mediocre results. Like Smith, he co-sponsored the tax cap initiative.

Mackie says "it's easy to launch grenades" at the school district's budget from the outside. The reality of it, though, is more difficult.

"Those things are really popular to say at election time. Nobody wants their taxes to go up," she said. "What we really want to know is that our money is being spent wisely and we are getting a good return on our investment."

A third candidate, Ted Wilson, has dropped out.

Stories on the April 6 Anchorage election

Tuesday: West Anchorage Assembly seat.

Wednesday: Midtown Anchorage Assembly seat.

Thursday: East Anchorage Assembly seat.