The school district is the largest recipient of your tax dollars if you live in the Federal Way School District.

Besides taking 43% of your state taxes they also are charging you over $ 4.00/1000 based on your assessment.

What are you getting for this?

The statistics just aren’t that good.

The nation is in the lower half of achievement when measured against other developed countries and the state of Washington is 43rd in the nation, down from 39th, in graduation rates.

Washington is also tied for 48th in students who meet the qualifications for admission to 4 year colleges.

Locally, according to “Education Week” the school district graduates only 45.7% of its 9th graders.

This number is below the State’s 62.4% average. The district does not have a single Black or Hispanic in the 10th grade that can place in the highest level on the state Mathematics exam.

Who is responsible for these numbers?

In this state the responsibility rests on school board directors. I believe they have defaulted.

During the past two years the school board has been made well aware of these statistics and has ignored these facts in all public meetings. For incumbents this is a disgrace in my opinion.

Previous school boards have taken actions to make higher achievement possible but have been reluctant to ask for parents’ assistance in moving more kids into higher achievement programs such as the Public Academy, International Baccalaureate, and Cambridge.

In previous school boards there have been members who did the research and then promoted changes in the way kids were to be educated. AVID, Cambridge, NATEF, and other programs were brought before the board by school board members; it is their responsibility for the quality of schools.

In the past two years there has been no evidence of any movement by school board members to improve the schools. Instead they have continued the old formula of simply asking the taxpayer, or state, for “more money” as if this achievement problem was related to money.

Do schools have to be this bad? I don’t think so, but it would require a board with some ideas and some fortitude to address the problems instead of ignoring them.

In District 1 we have Ed Barney, incumbent, running against Bill Pirkle.

In the 6 years that I served on the Board I found Ed to be an agreeable person who didn’t seem to have any strong ideas that he wished to champion.

Ed seemed more interested in the music and athletic programs than in addressing any measures that would change what is happening in our schools.

Ed didn’t want to incur any controversy as seems to be the case with school board directors nationwide. While Ed has said “he supported” many of the items introduced by the previous school board his only “support” in most cases was that he didn’t vote against it. Ed just didn’t seem to want to “run up hill” to make the kind of changes that could turn school around.

Bill Pirkle, a former substitute teacher, on the other hand has attended many of the same school board meetings as Ed and has addressed the school board on many occasions with forthright suggestions for ways that would bring achievement to the highest priority.

His suggestions, as they would change schools into places of learning instead of social halls, were never even brought to an open discussion by the board as they seem to not want to discuss practical ways that schools could be improved.

Mr. Pirkle’s recommendations would have required teachers to focus on learning and behave like mature adults. Just too heady for most school board members.

Bill Pirkle is clearly my choice if we want to dig our way out of the hole that education is in.

Federal Way just isn’t a place where all kids are getting a great education. One of the Principals of one of our schools, upon leaving the district enrolled his children in one of the finest preparatory schools in the Seattle area. Isn’t that a clear message for all of us?

In District 4 we have Angela Griffin, a recent appointee, running against Steve Skipper a previous candidate.

We can not blame Angela for much of what happened in our schools in the previous years.

She has only been on the Board for about one year and during this time she has discovered some glaring reasons for why our schools are not doing better.

As of yet she hasn’t seemed to find a way to bring these issues up that doesn’t “offend” some of her fellow board members.

The “standard” for behavior on school boards, according to the state organization, is to be “cooperative and consensual” and this is a large part of the reason we have such ineffective school boards. They simply don’t “Want to go there” if there is any “conflict.”

It is only the kids who suffer from this. Angela has seen some of the “gaps” in the way we treat both kids and parents that often leads to the statistics mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Should she be elected we could only hope that she will “Mount a Crusade” to change this.

Steve Skipper ran several years ago due to the frustration that he had about his daughter’s education in Federal Way.

Most of the frustrations he had then still exist today. Steve teaches in adult education and sees weekly the gaps that adults, many graduates or attendees, of Federal Way’s schools have in the basics.

Steve is a strong proponent of “Mastery of the Basics” and served, unsuccessfully, on the last Mathematics textbook selection committee. The results of that selection have now been exposed. Steve’s recommendation was clearly not accepted.

Steve understands some of the basic assumptions with which our school district operates, and would suggest that they be changed based upon the district’s success rate.

Here we have two people that may be on the same train on some of the problems of the school district. Change is needed and either of these two candidates may understand this.

I give this to Steve as his convictions are better known to me.

Clearly we need some more assertive members on our school board that will be bringing ideas for solutions to the table.