Nick Esparza is running for Seattle School Board, West Seattle District VI, He is challenging Martha "Marty" McLaren, Joy Anderson and incumbent Steve Sundquist in the Aug. 16 primary. The West Seattle Herald interviewed McLaren, Sundquist, Anderson and now Esparza, all West Seattle residents.

The top two vote-getters are chosen by voters in their district where there is a primary race, four of the seven districts in this election. Then all of Seattle votes for their favorite candidate in all four districts. In addition to Sundquist, other incumbents being challenged are Peter Maier in District I, Sherry Carr in District II, and Harium Martin-Morris in District III.

Nick Esparza's bio

Nick Esparza was born in Yakima, raised in Pullman, attended Yakima Valley Community College, went on to Central Washington University. He received his BS Degree in Political Science from the University of the Ozarks in 2008. He is a graduate student at Arkansas Tech University online pursing his College Student Personel degree. He has worked with children with disabilities, at-risk youth, in Student Support Services, Upward Bound, and mentored first-year college students. He advocates for parents who do not receive what they believe to be reasonable accommodation for their children around ADA. He currently resides in the Gatewood neighborhood of West Seattle.

Policies

"When my challengers just talk about math, there is a danger. You have to have to be able to do a lot of other things. The University of Washington looks for a whole list of things, not just math.

"When I go out and talk to families, they talk a little about math, but they also talk about school closures, financial accountability, why there are no grade school counselors. But every time I turn around there is money going in every other direction than to frontline staff. They say there is no money for summer school and yet the District and School Board talk about closing the achievement gap. They would have to cut waste to fund summer school. They didn't have to give 25 administrators a non-promotional raise in a budget crisis year. People in the private sector don't always get a raise in this economy.

We don't need to hire more administrators on the front end that are draining the budget. If you want to close that achievement gap you need to hire more teachers and frontline staff.

Staff at West Seattle schools are like people working with a house on fire but working really hard to get everybody out of the house with fewer people than they need. They are committed people who don't feel like the Central Administration Office is supporting them. I have watched the School Board make poor decisions on school closures and other financial things and thought, 'It's got to get better' but nobody was responding and it was at that point I said, 'OK. I am going to run.'

"We need to reduce class sizes. It is unacceptable that there would be a class of 35. Large class sizes do affect learning outcomes (negatively). I would go to Olympia and use the bully pulpit to try to get these people to do a better job to fund K to 12 education. If these kids don't graduate, and get incarcerated, we will pay more money in the long term. The Running Start program had been a real drain on public education. I'm not saying Running Start should never be used, but in the current budget environment we'd do better taking that money to reduce class size, and to bring back frontline staff to schools and maybe improve math, science, and English scores, not just in Seattle but all over the state.

"If you go online and type in 'Seattle Public Schools' you will see that there is an assistant superintendent job that pays almost $200,000 a year, and four or five application specialist jobs earning over $100,000. If we're going to be making budget cuts we need to kick every stone over downtown first to find money for frontline instruction because kids have a right to learn. They always seem to find money for whatever else they want.

"I don't look at is as being a nay-sayer. I think that there is a danger in giving the District whatever they want. If I ask tough questions it is because I want to make the hard decisions. We have a right to say, 'What is the money being used for?' It is our money. We've had a board that has had the unwillingness to ask questions that got us into losing $1.8 million while selling schools at a rock-bottom loss.

"I've been asked a lot on the campaign trail, 'Why are you running? You don't have children?' Because I don't have children, schools still matter to me. Failing schools affect the entire community. Microsoft and Boeing understand that. They pump millions of dollars into college scholarships. They want to have quality workers when they graduate."

"The Board needs to advertise in the newspapers, placed flyers in the libraries when they make changes that affect students in every community. In general their way of getting out information is on the World Wide Web, Not everyone has a computer."