Editorial: Reykdal best to aid achievement of schools, students

By The Herald Editorial Board

The struggles of the Marysville School District offer voters in Snohomish County a example of some of the challenges that face public education in Washington state and the task set before the two candidates looking to lead the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction: incumbent Chris Reykdal and challenger David Olson.

Reykdal, seeking a third four-year term, has previously served on the Tumwater school board, taught history in high school classrooms, was a state House lawmaker, and was an official on the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges. He earned his teaching certificate from WSU and has a master’s in public administration.

Olson has served on the school board for the Peninsula School District in Gig Harbor since 2013, serving as its legislative liaison and with the state school directors association. He is retired from the U.S. Navy, where he attended officer candidate and technical schools. He has a bachelor’s in organizational leadership.

The state superintendent, a nonpartisan office, oversees school funding, implements educational laws, sets curriculum standards and provides resources and technical assistance to 295 school districts and seven state-tribal compact schools, serving more than 1 million K-12 students.

Following the failures of two school levies — property tax requests to district voters that fund additional needs above what state funding provides — the Marysville district fell into financial insolvency and personnel turmoil that in recent months resulted in OSPI placing the district under binding financial oversight, an appointment of a special administrator, the resignation of two board members and most recently the departure of its district superintendent.

Marysville wasn’t unique in the financial constraints it faced — responding to the pandemic, reduced enrollment and its levy failures — but the urgency of its response to those challenges lagged.

The bottom line, said Reykdal in an interview late last month before the district superintendent’s departure, was the district failed to make timely and necessary budget cuts in the face of reduced revenue.

“This next step causes us to force some spending reductions during the school year so we don’t keep exacerbating the problem, and they still have more work to do,” Reykdal said. “This isn’t just a ‘get in the black’ for one month or one year; they have to show us a viable plan for the next couple years.”

There’s some leeway for the district to decide where to cut, but his office is ready to step in if necessary and make those cuts, he said.

The good news for the district is that it did pass its most recent levy request this spring, providing additional revenue.

“But boy, they’re still digging out of the hole,” he said.

From Olson’s perspective, the Peninsula School District fared the pandemic and lower enrollment with far less turmoil than Marysville and used public outreach and financial transparency to build support for the district, shown by its passage in 2019 of a nearly $200 million school construction bond with 66 percent approval, exceeding the 60 percent supermajority required for bond requests.

What would help all districts, Olson said, is training for school board members on financial issues, alerting them to problems earlier.

Reykdal, noting conversations with state Auditor Pat McCarthy, who is responsible for auditing all school districts, agreed there’s a need for greater financial understanding for each district’s citizen representatives.

“Where we really agree with her is we haven’t been confident that they have either the tools or the technical expertise to know the depths of their budget enough,” he said.

The lessons from Marysville’s troubles, however, are not reserved to one district.

“This is what I’ve been trying to talk to lawmakers about,” said Reykdal, who has made a request to add $2.9 billion a year to the K-12 education budget, above the $31 billion allocated in the current two-year budget. Yet that still falls short of what he sees as $4 billion in what students are owed under the state constitution’s “paramount duty” to education.

Olson as a school board member has a full understanding of the funding issue and holds lawmakers particularly responsibility for a persistent lack of funding for districts’ special education needs.

“We, the school districts, have to pay for special ed with levy money because we’re not getting enough from the state,” Olson said, funding that’s supposed to be provided by the state as basic education, and not supplemented by local levies. “It’s really, really onerous.”

Reykdal agrees; a third of his additional $2.9 billion request would go toward special education needs.

What is needed, Olson said, noting the inadequacy of past funding solutions from the state lottery, cannabis taxes and his doubts about the capital gains tax, is work by the Legislature to readdress the reforms that followed the McCleary lawsuit nearly a decade ago and which he said “turned out to be a disaster.”

“We need to readdress how we fund education across the state,” Olson said.

Nor is Olson convinced that what the state and local taxpayers are funding has resulted in expected outcomes in student achievement, claiming that the state’s education system ranked 10th in the nation a decade ago, but now ranks 27th. (A Washington State House Republicans report cites its national ranking at 25th, according to a 2023 WalletHub survey.)

Olson said test results were sliding before covid and have made little improvement since. And he has doubts about how rigorous the grades are that students are now receiving.

“I want to restore academic rigor and make sure we’re not dumbing down our education system,” he said.

Reykdal disagrees with that assessment and points to what’s considered the nation’s report card, the National Assessment of Education Progress, which assesses performance for fourth-graders and eighth-graders in math and reading. Rather than ranking states, the NAEP looks at how many other states are markedly outperforming a particular state. In its most recent report for 2022, Washington fourth-graders were outperformed by six other states in reading, while eighth-grade readers were outperformed by only three other state’s cohorts, actually better outcomes than prior to covid, the report finds.

If there is a threat to academic achievement and student’s mental health, both candidates agree, it’s coming from inside the classroom, more precisely from students’ pockets: smartphones.

Olson’s school district, with board approval, has for about a year required students to keep their phones in their backpacks and has blocked schools’ internet access to social media sites. The result has been more interaction among kids, reduced stress, fewer discipline issues and early signs of improved test scores, he said.

Nationwide, Reykdal said, the decline in test scores that began in 2012 coincided with a majority of middle and high school students having internet-connected phones. OSPI, he said, has been tracking responses and policy and is still gathering data, but sees improvement in schools and districts where phones are stowed during class. His office can’t impose a phone ban; that’s a decision for the Legislature or individual school districts, but his office has provided guidance to districts with suggestions, including requiring phones to be kept in a locker or classroom drawer during the school day.

There is no state office with greater responsibility for assuring the future success of the state and its residents than that of the state superintendent in guiding school districts and schools toward the individual success of students in careers, families and community.

Olson presents an informed and experienced challenge, but Reykdal in a career long focused on these issues has proved his value during two demanding terms; with higher graduation rates, increased participation in college classes for high school students, a record number of students enrolled in dual-language learning, access to free school meals for more students and the addition of graduation pathways toward Career and Technical Education, among other accomplishments.

Reykdal has provided the leadership that is necessary for students, teachers and schools to continue the climb up from pandemic losses and toward success, joined by the drive to hold lawmakers to their mandate to provide the funding and education students are due.