This is the first in a series of profiles of primary-election candidates for North Kitsap School Board.

POULSBO — Loretta Byrnes is used to life at an energetic pace: training farmers for CARE in Bangladesh; helping women in Rwanda build up seed supplies for food crops; and distributing commodities to displaced peoples in Sierra Leone.

So it was only natural, perhaps, that she consented to an interview in the parking lot of a bank as she was walking to her car.

“Sure, we can do this now,” she said.

Byrnes, 55, is one of three candidates for the District 4 position on the North Kitsap School Board. The others are Scott Henden of Kingston, an electrical contractor seeking a second term; and Glen Robbins of Port Gamble, president of the Poulsbo Sons of Norway Lodge.

The two top vote-getters in the Aug. 4 primary will advance to the Nov. 3 general election. School board members serve four-year terms and are not paid.

Her approach to education seems to mirror her approach to work she’s done in program design and performance management: direct and back to basics — establish a program, set goals and implement a process to monitor progress toward accomplishing the mission.

According to her bio, in her career for CARE, World Vision and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she worked with farmers and stakeholders to strengthen delivery of services to farmers; established project goals and implemented monitoring systems to ensure goals were met; and provided technical, financial and organizational support needed to accomplish increased ag production.

She believes education can operate the same way.

“I’ve been very involved in training and adult learning. It’s one of the reasons I’m interested in serving on the school board,” she said.

“The school district came up with a strategic plan and I have a lot of experience in that. They have a bunch of goals in the strategic plan, but it’s not clear what the activities are [to ensure they meet those goals]. For example, the overall goal is to increase the graduation rate to 95 percent of the state average by 2020, but it’s not clear what data they’ll use to measure that.”

Likewise for community engagement. “It’s one of their goals, but they don’t know how they’re going to do that. They haven’t been specific on what kinds of topics they need to engage with the community on.”

Served on school board in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Byrnes, 55, has a bachelor of science in agronomy from Washington State University and a master of science in agricultural economics from Oregon State University. She and her husband have a total of eight children. The youngest graduated this year from Kingston High.

Her first experience as a school board member was in a uniquely challenging environment. She was working in Sierra Leone as food-security program coordinator for CARE and was elected to the board of the State Department’s American International School in Freetown.

“It was just as the civil war was ending,” Byrnes said. “The school had taken on damage from the war. It was difficult to get teachers.

“It was a small school — 50 students, five or six teachers and a principal/teacher — and it was a great school. We just tried to be supportive of the principal in getting things done.”

From 1989 to 2008 — with the exception of a year working as an economic analyst for the State of Washington — she lived and worked in Bangladesh, Rwanda and Sierra Leone as a socioeconomist or program coordinator.

After returning to the States, she worked for six months as King County WorkSource area director; four years as agriculture program officer for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and is now an independent consultant on program design and performance management. She said she’s consulting in Bangladesh at the end of July.

Here’s what she had to say about some issues.

— Common Core: Common Core (www.corestandards.org) is an initiative that details what K–12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. Common Core has been adopted by 41 states, including Washington; four states have repealed or withdrawn from it.

“I’m not an expert on Common Core, but my understanding is they have this assessment to measure whether children are learning what is in Common Core. But there’s a lack of clarity on what it is kids are really expected to understand or learn.”

She added, “It’s up to local superintendents to clarify what it means [to teachers], because they have to implement it. They’ve been told they have to administer the test, but they don’t know what’s in the test.”

(Byrnes’ former employer, the Gates Foundation, is a financial supporter of the Common Core Initiative.)

— Testing: “Testing and data are two different topics. A concern I have is, we’re changing tests too frequently. To change your mind every four years on how to test kids is like changing the goal posts in the middle of the soccer game.”

— District and teen suicide prevention: Four North Kitsap district students have committed suicide in the last five years, according to the school district.

“We never know the personal issue of why someone commits suicide, because it’s private and individual. Schools and school districts are expected to take on every issue, but if they were focused more on education and not expected to spend so much time on so many new programs, I think kids would be less likely to do those things, if they were fully engaged in learning and where they were going with their future.”

— On how she stands apart from the other candidates: “Primarily, I’m very analytical. I would like the school board, the school district, to look at the bigger issues. If 30 percent of third graders cannot read, why’s that? If 30 percent of fifth-graders can’t read at grade level or at the third-grade level, should you send them on to middle school?”

— On relations with Port Gamble S’Klallam and Suquamish governments: “I’m not all that familiar with it, but I know they do have sovereignty and they are very involved in the education of their children. It’s important that culture is included in their children’s education and that they get that cultural perspective. And it seems like the school district has a very good relationship with the Tribes.”