Having served on the Eudora school board during bleak years, Mike Kelso is hoping for four more years with better times.

With his filing this week, Kelso was the first official candidate for the three at-large Eudora school board seats on the ballot this year. The terms of incumbents Joe Hurla and Eric Votaw will also expire. The filing deadline for this year’s school board elections is noon June 1.

All positions on the Eudora board are elected at large, and all candidates for the board are placed on the same ballot. Voters can cast votes for up to three candidates, with the three candidates receiving the most votes in the November general election winning a seat on the board. An Aug. 1 primary would only be required if 10 or more candidates file for the Eudora school board and would trim the slate to nine candidates.

Kelso, an IT applications administer for Epiq Systems, said he was seeking another four-year term because he thought the current board was strong and in anticipation of working with greater resources with the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling last month that the Legislature’s funding for K-12 education was constitutionally inadequate.

“We weathered the bad years; hopefully with the Gannon decision things will start getting better,” he said. “I’d like to undo some of the bad choices we had to make back in 2011 when we had to eliminate some positions.”

Kelso said the board has forged a good relationship with the city through such actions as selling the closed Nottingham Elementary School and Laws Field to the city, signing onto a tax increment district that would help pay for the needed infrastructure to redevelop the site, and approving the city’s request to build a new soccer complex between Eudora High School and Eudora Middle School.

“That will benefit both the city and the district,” he said of the soccer complex. “It will take a large chunk of ground that will now be maintained by the city. That will save the district time and money.”

Looking ahead, Kelso said, the board needs to monitor class sizes at Eudora Elementary School, which with more than 900 students is now the state’s largest elementary school. The board took a step in recent months to free up four classrooms at the school with its decision to relocate the district’s preschool classes back to West Elementary, he said.

Kelso and his wife, Robyn, a high school social studies teacher, have two adult children.