Denise Tracy is the newly elected Central Kitsap School District board director of district one. She moved to Kitsap County in 2008 after growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has four kids in the school district and decided that running for a school board position would be an interesting thing to do after being involved in the PTA and being a parent representative on the elementary reopening team while listening to board meetings. 

“Having the board meetings on Zoom, it made it way easier for me because I could do it on my phone … and I realized that I knew a lot of answers … and I just got interested and then found out that Bruce [Richards, former director of district one] was not going to run for reelection and so I kind of decided after lots of thought to kind of dip my toes in and see” Tracy said. 

Tracy values communication and engagement, “students will thrive with more family and community and parent engagement and involvement… and its listening and validating all of the different opinions and emotions … and then working together. It’s collaborating to come up with solutions.”

She also highly values the students and their voices and ideas.

 “Elevating student voice, but really, what do students need from their schools? What concerns do they have? … it’s always trying to turn it back to the students. I know I’m elected by voters, but I want to serve the students,” Tracy said. 

Tracy is very passionate about communication and students, and her plan to help improve schools in the district is to go and visit schools and volunteer. 

“Visit all of the schools as regularly as I can,” Tracy said. “… I want to go in and help … I think to just be visible and to show that I do care.”