(Courtesy: UCSD)

Unalaska’s school board has a new president, capping two years of major turnover.

The board voted Melanie Magnusen in as chair at a meeting this week. She’s replacing Abner Hoage, who’s leaving Unalaska next month to become fire chief in Ketchikan.

Hoage took over from Tammy Pound, who served on school board for more than a decade.

Now, Magnusen is the board's longest-serving member by a long shot, with seven years under her belt. It’s the main reason she says she was nominated as chair.

"I’m going to quickly get up to speed at being the president, because that came on so quickly," she says, "and mentor these new members -- you know, there’s so many."

Cathy Jordan, Fernando Barrera and Denise Rankin have all served a year or less on the board. They were elected for their first full terms this year.

In their campaigns, they said they want to focus on things like preserving travel and extracurricular options for students.

But going forward, Magnusen says she’s trying not to zero in on anything specific. And she says she hopes her fellow members will do the same.

"Please go in with an open mind and not just with one issue, like, 'we’ve got to change X,'" she says. "You just have to learn the whole system and see what’s going on."

Magnusen says she wants to focus on maintaining what Unalaska schools have to offer now, and improving where they can. But with a tight budget, she says she knows they can’t add many new teachers or classes.

Instead, she says she hopes to find ways to work around Unalaska’s internet constraints, to look into more distance learning and higher-level course options for students.