Mary Alice Bruce joins Albany County School Board

The trustees filled their second vacant position in three months. Bruce, a retired UW professor, was selected Wednesday, following interviews with three other candidates.

The Albany County School Board added Mary Alice Bruce to its ranks this week, selecting the retired University of Wyoming professor to fill a vacant position.

Following former Trustee Jamin Johnson’s resignation earlier this month, the board received four applications and interviewed all applicants during a special meeting Wednesday.

Bruce began her career as a math teacher, instructing students both in Kenya through the Peace Corps and in Iowa. She worked as a school counselor, eventually earning her Ph.D. in counselor education and taking a job in UW’s College of Education. She spent three decades teaching at UW, achieving full professorship and serving on both state and national boards in her field.

Bruce retired in 2019.

“Passionate about education — that’s me,” Bruce said during her interview Wednesday. “I’ve been focused on this for more than 30 years here in Laramie. Laramie is now my home so making a difference in my community really matters to me.”

Bruce, like the other applicants, was asked about the district’s strengths and weaknesses.

“I’m no authority on all the strengths and specific weaknesses like you all are,” she said. “From my outside perspective, I see real professionalism on the staff, I see the caring concern that the staff has for all the students and that’s really admirable. I see the data-driven decisions that are made. For instance, the superintendent bringing the survey of the teachers and talking about what’s really going on with masks and COVID.”

In the weaknesses column, Bruce listed looming budget cuts from the state and that local teacher salaries are no longer competitive nationally. As a math teacher, Bruce added she would like to see the district’s WY-TOPP scores higher.

Nationally, school board meetings became political battlegrounds in 2021. In Albany County, a fierce fight over the district’s mask mandate dominated meetings throughout the fall. Anti-mask protesters even shut down multiple meetings, once by howling over the county public health officer and storming around the auditorium.

Elsewhere, school boards have faced challenges from parents wishing to ban books from school libraries. Other school boards have had to deal with accusations that they were teaching critical race theory in classrooms — a claim that is often based on bad or no evidence, but has nonetheless become a rallying cry for right-wing activists.

Against this backdrop, Bruce and the other applicants were asked about the role of parent feedback in determining school curriculum.

Bruce said school professionals should “take the lead.”

“As a school counselor, especially when I was doing health education — involving sex education and use of condoms and everything — we brought in the parents to talk with us about what was acceptable and not acceptable,” Bruce said. “A collaborative approach, really carefully listening to the perspectives of the parents, is very helpful. At the same time, for me, the teachers, the staff, the administrators take the lead on the curriculum and education, because they’re prepared and they’re trained.”

Following interviews, the school board went into executive session, returning after 70 minutes to appoint Bruce.

The other applicants were Dan Bleak, Gwen Clark and Jeff Suloff. All four applicants this time were also applicants in November during the board’s last vacancy appointment process.

Seven of the nine school board trustees, including Bruce, will be up for election this year.