A North Highline woman, whose son attended special education classes in the Highline district, is running for the Highline School Board.

Susan Goding will oppose Mengstab Tzegai in the November election. Tzegai was appointed to the board last year.

According to Goding, she first enrolled her son in the fifth grade at Hilltop Elementary and home-schooled him in the sixth grade. He then attended Chinook Middle and Tyee High schools.

Because of a language disability, Goding said her son was assigned to special education classes from second through eighth grade, when she pulled him out of the program, against the district's wishes.

Her son graduated from high school on time and is now studying computer science at Washington State University.

Goding said she is running for the school board because "I'm not one of those people who think we need to spend more money to improve our schools. We just need to get a better return for our tax dollars.

"I believe we can do that by changing the focus to our schools from teaching environments to learning environments."

Goding presents three ideas for changing the focus.

First, change the focus of special education from fixing students to helping them figure out what they need to do to compensate for their problems.

"Disabilities by definition are not curable," Goding declared. "There is lots of assistive technology out there that can help our children succeed in regular classrooms."

Second, students should be allowed to choose the foreign language they wish to learn.

"Any language; Tagalog, Vietnamese or Yup'ik," Goding noted. "The teacher would teach techniques and skills students need to learn their language of choice. All in one classroom."

Third, teachers should let students know where they are going in their subjects.

"For instance, at the beginning of the year, the teacher can say the class will cover 11 chapters in the math text. If a student wishes to go ahead, when they've turned in all 11 chapters of homework, the next book is here, in the class bookshelf, for the student to take and continue to progress.

"At Tyee, 50 percent of the students are choosing a learning based approach to the future. They are dropping out of school, out of the teaching based program, which is failing," Goding added.