The Post Falls School Board could have three brand new trustees next year after two trustees decided not to file for re-election and the board chair drew a challenger. 

Seeking his second term, Neil Uhrig faces former Post Falls principal Brad Harmon. 

Mom and behavior interventionist Kelli Johnson faces Thomas Barrett Jr., a project manager for BNSF Railway, who has two kids in the district. The seat is open after Jake Dawson decided not to run for a second term. 

The board will have at least two new trustees after Logan Creighton in Zone 4 also decided not to run for re-election. Amy Boni was the only person to file for the Zone 4 seat and will fill the position in January. 

Zone 1

Brad Harmon

Harmon, 47, spent decades in the Post Falls School District as a teacher and administrator. 

He left last year to take a position as the Kellogg Middle School principal after frustrations with district leaders leaving teaching positions unfilled.

“I believe that the kids are great. They have a lot to offer,” Harmon said. “I haven’t been extremely happy with the direction that things are going. I think that the board has stepped away from some of their duties.” 

Harmon pointed to multiple teaching positions that went unfilled and district leaders cited financial issues, while adding a deputy superintendent position. 

“To add positions at the district office but cut at schools is questionable,” he said. 

Harmon said the current board of trustees isn’t doing enough due diligence on administrator’s recommendations. 

As another example, he gave an unabridged version of Anne Frank’s diary that contained what he called a “sexually graphic” content that was approved to be taught at the secondary level. 

“I think kids need to be put first and right now I believe a lot of the adults are being put first,” Harmon said. 

While he expressed concerns about curriculum review, Harmon said he thinks the librarians in Post Falls make good decisions when it comes to book purchasing. 

“It is the parent’s responsibility to know what their kids have,” Harmon said of non-required reading. “I believe we may have taken it too far by removing books.” 

Harmon said he’s frustrated that students are tested monthly, sometimes more than once a month, a move he sees as designed to improve test scores over student learning. 

While Harmon said he does have frustrations with Uhrig, he declined to share them. 

“I had that discussion with him and I told him that this is not going to be a slander campaign so I’m going to choose to leave it at that,” Harmon said. 

Harmon and his children attended Post Falls Schools and his parents were teachers. He said he just wants what’s best for the kids of the district. 

“I am extremely knowledgeable about school,” Harmon said. “I’ve spent a life in public education and I bring that view which that board doesn’t currently have.” 

Harmon did not seek endorsement from political groups.

Neil Uhrig (incumbent)

Uhrig, 42, is a former Post Falls police officer who currently does digital forensics for the United States Secret Service.

He ran for school board four years ago because he wanted to contribute to his children’s education but doesn’t have the skills to be a sports coach. He plans for this to be his last term while his kids finish out high school.

Uhrig touts the district’s increased literacy scores, due to the trustees funding reading intervention positions at all the district’s elementary schools, as one of the board’s top achievements.

The board also approved a four-day school week to retain staff, who could make more money by driving 15 minutes to Washington state.

“We’ve seen no decrease in achievement,” Uhrig said.

The move also allows for more staff training and collaboration on the monthly “purple fridays” where teachers do work.

Post Falls runs a very “lean” budget, Uhrig said, noting the supplemental levy amount has not increased significantly in years.

Uhrig addressed Harmon’s criticism of leaving teaching positions unfilled. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, the district has experienced dips in enrollment, he said. To account for that financial loss, the district has begun leaving some positions open throughout the summer then hiring in the fall once enrollment settles.

Uhrig argues that it’s financially responsible with taxpayer dollars. He also took credit for hiring the deputy superintendent.

Hiring a new superintendent to replace Dena Naccarato, who is retiring in July, would have been split across two school board, Uhrig said. With recruitment needing to start in the fall for a spring hire, he said.

To avoid that, Uhrig proposed promoting assistant superintendent Anna Wilson into a deputy superintendent role. She then will take over as interim superintendent for the 2026-27 school year, allowing the new trustees time to make a considered hire.

“They need to have that training before they make that very important decision,” Uhrig said.

He argued hiring a superintendent is the board of trustees most important job. While adding the position comes at a financial cost, Uhrig argued it’s “well worth that investment.”

“If we don’t do this right we’re going to hurt the district,”Uhrig said. “I firmly believe it’s the right thing to do.”

When it come to curriculum and library book selections, Uhrig said while the board has final approval, trustees cannot work on the issue full time. So the board created processes with sub-committees to evaluate books and curriculum in a more indepth way than a volunteer school board can.

Zone 5

Thomas Barrett Jr.

Barrett, 41, thinks Post Falls is a great district academically but struggles with future and business planning. He hopes to add his business acumen to the board of trustees.

His wife is a teacher in Washington and the couple has two children in the district, a 14-year-old freshman at Post Falls High and a sixth grader. 

Barrett is a Post Falls alumni and remembers how overcrowding back in the 1990s impacted his family when he was in middle school and the building went to a split schedule.

“I went from six in the morning and my brother went from noon to six,” Barrett said. “So it destroyed our family for a couple years.”

Currently, in the district’s facilities plan, there are discussions of building a new high school but Barrett said he’s concerned that more facilities would strain the system. 

“It’s going to start costing more to run those logistics,” he said. 

Barrett wants to look at an expansion to the existing high school and building elementary and middle schools on larger lots to leave room for expansion. 

He also takes issue with the district’s four day school week keeping kids in school for long days and straining their attention spans. 

“I know with my kids, I only get about 15 minutes of, like, good connection to where we get to transfer knowledge,” Barrett said. 

Now though the genie is out of the bottle financially, Barrett said because to go back to a five day school week, the district would have to increase teacher pay for the fifth day, which while deserved, would be expensive. On the fifth day, many families like Barrett’s, are spending money on childcare or tutoring, he said. 

His own children take music lessons on Fridays. 

While Barrett sees room for improvement on the business and planning side, he doesn’t want the board to get too involved in curriculum and instruction on the micro level. 

“I wouldn’t really want to dig down into where I’m starting to interfere with teachers, curriculums and things like that,” Barrett said. “Because we all remember what happened to NIC when, you know, so I’m very cognizant of that.”

Barrett said he thinks Superintendent Dena Naccarato and most instructional staff are doing a great job. 

“It’s just from the business end I just see errors,” he said. 

Kelli Johnson

Johnson, 33, is a stay-at-home mom who wants to use her background as a behavior interventionist for special needs children and her teaching degree to better her community.

She grew up in Post Falls and married her high school sweetheart. The couple share an 8-year-old girl, who attends private school, and a 4-year-old boy. 

“It always just came back to teaching,” Johnson said of her career plans. 

She got her teaching degree and began working at The Learning Garden, a private facility that provides services to families with disabled children. She worked with kids of all ages. Working one-on-one with families and students enabled her to be a part of many “aha” moments.

“I just loved that direct reflection of your work,” Johnson said. 

About a year and a half ago, Johnson and her husband decided she would stay home with their kids. She’s on the board of Tesh, which works with developmentally disabled adults  and children to teach them life skills like cooking and tasks around the house, but still felt like she had more time to give. 

So when she heard Dawson had decided not to run for another term, she decided to run for trustee. 

“That’s where my passion is,” Johnson said of public schools. “I see such a high value in the education that public school provides.” 

While Johnson’s daughter is in private school, she figures she might end up at public school when it’s the right fit and wants to stay involved in the system. 

She doesn’t have any major changes that she would like to see to the district currently. Johnson said teachers need more support and that parents often feel their voices aren’t being heard by the district so facilitating better communication is one of Johnson’s goals. 

Johnson hopes her expertise could help the district navigate coming Medicaid cutbacks. 

She also wants to be involved in future planning with district building’s filling up. Johnson said she sees a tough balance between needing to expand but struggling to find staffing for more schools. 

“We need more schools but with that we need more teachers and that’s hard to find,”  Johnson said, noting that Post Falls pays less than the surrounding districts in Kootenai County and in nearby Washington. 

Johnson is endorsed by both the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee and the North Idaho Republicans. She is also endorsed by Citizens for Post Falls Schools.