A former Juneau School Board member submitted what current board members called “disparaging comments” to be engraved on fundraising bricks for a new school playground in Lemon Creek.
Emil Mackey paid for the bricks and submitted the comments. He served on the Juneau Board of Education for nine years. He and another board member were the subjects of a failed recall effort in 2024. Mackey decided not to run for reelection last fall.
The four bricks cost a total of $1,000.
“I wanted a record that we would rather fund a new City Hall, a new gondola and other things that, frankly, the public doesn’t want over a school playground, that’s necessary, not just to the students at that school, but also the community at large,” he said.
The bricks are a part of a “Buy a Brick” campaign the district launched last fall to fundraise for a new playground at the Dzantik’i Heeni campus, which houses three different schools for students in grades pre-K through high school.
Students there have been playing without a playground for the past two years since the district consolidated Juneau’s middle and high schools to address budget shortfalls. The playground project has taken much longer than expected. It’s being paid for using a patchwork of funding split between the district, city and donors.
Mackey said all of that could have been avoided if the Assembly had chosen to prioritize funding the playground over projects he says residents don’t want.
The comments he submitted to be engraved on the bricks state things like “The City Prioritized A New City Hall Over a New Playground” and “The City Funded a Gondola Over Fully Funding this Project.” One brick also specifically called out new board member, Jenny Thomas, for voting against funding for the project.
The Juneau Assembly voted to purchase the gondola in 2022, while discussions of building the playground began in 2024. The Assembly approved the purchase o fa new City Hall space last year.
Mackey said the bricks are simply meant to memorialize his displeasure with the Assembly’s spending in recent years and hold them accountable.
“I haven’t said anything that they didn’t actually do as a body within the budgetary process, and if it embarrasses them, they need to think about how they can do better in the future,” he said.
In an interview, Mayor Beth Weldon called Mackey’s comments inaccurate and inappropriate.
“It shows poor character to make a playground a political platform,” she said.
Some school board members brought up the bricks during a regular board meeting on Tuesday night, though they did not mention Mackey by name.
“At one point, I think I described the particular community member’s actions as childish, and then I realized that children don’t behave that badly,” board member David Noon said. “The person who did this really had to go out of their way to be a nuisance. So, apologies to the children who might have been insulted by the comparison.”
But the bricks will still probably be installed at the playground. Juneau’s city attorney said the comments are likely protected under First Amendment rights, though the board can choose to challenge that. The board hasn’t given any direction to do so.
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