Seven candidates apply for BISD school board spot

Bainbridge Island School District received seven applications for the 4th District director position previously held by Christina Hulet who stepped down March 9.

District 4 candidate interviews will be held March 23 at 4:30 p.m. The interviews will be held in the board room and the meeting is open to the public. The four remaining BISD school board directors will appoint one of the candidates to District 4 and the appointee will be sworn in at the March 30 school board meeting.

Courtney Donley: Donley has a background in mental health and attended the University of Tennessee Knoxville and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She attended the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health. Her two children currently attend Blakely Elementary.

Andrew Ewing: Ewing works as a data scientist in the tech sector, focusing on building data products in the TV advertising industry, and serves as an adjunct lecturer in conomics at Northeastern University-Seattle. Prior to these positions, he worked in the finance department for King County Wastewater Treatment where he gained experience in budgeting, forecasting and working with various stakeholders to manage complex finances of a large public utility. Ewing has served on BISD’s District Budget Advisory Committee since 2020. He and his family have lived on Bainbridge Island since 2012 and he has two children enrolled in the Odyssey Multiage Program.

Thomas Greene: Greene has lived on Bainbridge Island since 1979 and his four children attended and graduated from BISD schools. One of his grandchildren currently attends Blakely Elementary, and another grandchild will attend Blakely in the fall. Greene has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Claremont McKenna and has served as CEO for a small agribusiness food brokerage firm on Bainbridge Island since 1988. He has served on BISD’s Instructional Materials Committee for three terms (for a total of 18 years).

Caitlin Lombardi: Lombardi grew up on Bainbridge Island and attended BISD from kindergarten through graduation and then attended Pitzer College. Her career has been focused on social justice and systems change. She spent 11 years with the American Civil Liberties Union and worked on many issues concerning students’ rights, protecting immigrant students and race equity. Her two older children attend Blakely Elementary and her youngest child will soon follow.

Kate O’Brien: O’Brien moved to Puget Sound in the 1990s after graduating from the University of California Santa Barbara with a degree in economics. She worked for almost a decade in the technology industry before transitioning to full-time parenting and becoming an impassioned volunteer at her children’s schools and serving on various school committees. O’Brien’s oldest child graduated from Bainbridge High School in 2022 and she has two other students currently attending BHS.

Evan Saint Clair: Saint Clair has a degree in conflict resolution from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After college, he taught in a rural school in Bangalore, India for a year. He then moved to Boston and worked for Horizons for Homeless Children. When his oldest child was born, Saint Clair transitioned to a stay-at-home parent and began a side business serving fitness and wellness communities. When his family moved to Bainbridge Island, he joined the board of the Bainbridge Mountain Biking Club and is the current president of the Odyssey PTO — the school where both of Evan’s children attend.

Casey Smith: Smith has worked as a software engineer for 20 years. His career has spanned from working at an electronic medical records startup in Las Vegas, as a government contractor in Washington D.C. and is currently principal engineer for Alexa Entertainment at Amazon. Smith and his family have lived on Bainbridge Island for six years; his twins attend El Velero Spanish Immersion at Ordway Elementary and he hopes to enroll his newborn in the program in 2028.