COEUR d'ALENE - Two people are vying for the Zone 3 seat on the Coeur d'Alene School District's Board of Trustees.

Incumbent Terri Seymour's seat is being challenged by Tambra Pickford, a former teacher and active volunteer.

Pickford said she is at a place in her life where running for school board just makes sense.

"I have been a parent volunteer for 10 years now," she said. "Now I want to make a difference in my community. I just want to do more."

She said her education background and experience would benefit the board. Pickford taught school for two years in the Fresno area of California, but when Pickford and her husband moved to Coeur d'Alene, she became a stay-at-home mother and a volunteer at her children's schools.

If elected, Pickford said, she wants to try and establish a mentoring program with local businesses.

"We live in a great community and I would like to build relationships between our schools and local businesses," Pickford said. "It would be nice to have a mentoring program for our students."

She would also like to get parents more engaged with the schools.

"I just want to hop in and be a team player," she said. "I want to set goals for improvement, and make sure there is progress being made."

Seymour said she initially ran for the school board four years ago because she wanted to have more influence on her children's education.

"My greatest concern was and still is the educational welfare of the students in a safe learning environment where parents are welcome to participate in the process," Seymour wrote in an email to The Press. "My experience in the business world gave me the practical knowledge of budgets and policies. Having a meaningful grasp on these matters is essential to making informed decisions for our district."

Seymour said the decision to run for re-election was difficult.

"I had actually considered not running so I could spend more time with my children," she said. "They're very active in sports and sometimes I couldn't go to their games or activities so I had a lot of guilt. But as the time drew closer to the election I actually felt panicked."

Seymour said she has spent the last four years putting her heart and soul into becoming an effective board member and giving that up would be hard.

"I felt like I was giving up everything I'd worked so hard for," she said. "I believe I have made a difference and hopefully I've had an impact on our students and I wanted to continue it."

After talking things over with her family, Seymour made the decision to run for re-election.

If elected, Seymour said, she would continue the anti-bullying efforts she started in her first term.

"I don't want any of our students to ever be afraid of being bullied at school, on the bus or online," Seymour said. "I've seen the effects of bullying. In my role as trustee, I am passionate about wanting to continue to do everything possible to bring it to an end."

Seymour said she will also focus on professional development for teachers and parental rights issues.

"I realize this is mostly a state-level issue, but I believe in local control so I will be taking their concerns to our legislators and the State Board of Education," she said.

While neither candidate was required to report campaign donations for this election cycle, incumbent Trustee Terri Seymour decided to report hers. A new law did pass this spring that would require school board candidates in districts with 500 or more students to start reporting donations, but that doesn't go into effect until July 1 of this year. Her challenger, Tambra Pickford, said her campaign is mostly self-funded. While she doesn't have any formal records, she said some of her friends raised roughly $700. All of the donations came from individuals, with the largest being $300 from her mother and $200 from her neighbor. Seymour raised a total of $1,641.44, with Brent Regan making the largest donation of $444.44. She had eight other donors contribute more than $50, and seven people contributing less than $50.