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-Hello, and welcome to "The Impact."
I'm Mike McClanahan.
This fall, Washington voters will decide who will be
in charge of state government.
Which translates into who will be in charge
of making decisions about public forests,
about the state regulated insurance market,
and about schools.
Voters will also decide the fate of some
of the major state programs and laws enacted in recent years
through a suite of initiatives on the ballot.
This is the first in a series of election-focused interviews
we're lining up now through the first week of November.
Tonight is
the nonpartisan Office of Superintendent
of Public Instruction.
The incumbent, Chris Reykdal,
has held the position since 2017.
Before that, he was a state representative.
He's also a former high school history teacher.
His opponent, David Olson,
has served on the Peninsula School Board since 2013.
He is a retired Naval officer
and was a Pierce County Charter Review Commissioner in 2016.
One of them will chart the course for K-12
education for 1.1 million public school students
for the next four years.
You'll hear from both candidates
tonight starting with the incumbent.
Joining me now is Chris Reykdal.
Welcome and thank you for your time, today.
If you could, just give us your top priorities for the state's
public education system
if voters send you to this office in November.
-We've got a million amazing kids out there learning
and the best educators in the country,
but we've got to fund.
So number one for me is always getting back to full funding.
We were getting close before the pandemic
and then we've lost a lot of ground in funding per student,
especially adjusted for inflation.
So I'll build that coalition, again.
Number two, we're really focused on student mental health
and behavioral health.
So there are investments that we get to make there
but there's also programming that we're deploying.
And we're really taking on the question of cell phone use,
but not just cell phones
but teaching students more holistically around the impact
of social media on their anxiety and their sense of isolation.
So it's much bigger than just cell phones.
And then third, very upfront about the risk of our schools
becoming privatized.
It matters that we all work hard and keep our schools public.
Locally-elected officials,
school boards in charge of the local schools, full funding.
There is this movement from very right-wing folks mostly
and some others who would give away taxpayer money to people
to take to for-profit corporations.
And even faith-based institutions in violation
of our constitution.
So we can't lose sight of the fact
that that's happening in other states
and I'll work hard to keep our schools very public
and locally accountable.
-You mentioned cell phones in relation to mental health, too.
Classroom learning,
behavior disruptions are concerns
that you frequently hear from parents or teachers as reasons
that they're concerned about their child's education.
Do you have a plan to address classroom disruptions,
to make education --
or classrooms more conducive to education, I guess?
-Yeah, this has been building for decades across the country.
It's not just now and it's not just the pandemic.
So more than a plan,
we've already issued guidance in the last several weeks
to school districts to say we're going to change
our rules at OSPI.
We got some authority to create a better balance for
how educators engage student discipline issues
in the classroom.
We still want parents very, very engaged.
It's very important,
but there's a normal relationship between a student
and their peers and a student and an educator
that has to be dealt with in the classroom.
And I think our state and other states,
we're getting a little too bureaucratic.
Where every single time a student was being addressed
for behavior, it caused a mountain of paperwork,
a mountain of phone calls, and it was bogging down the system.
Instead of like when we went to school,
if we were mouthing off in class or we weren't paying attention,
the teacher got to address that right there.
We're going to get back to that
and we're going to empower our educators with
appropriate parent information, of course, along the way.
But it's really important that all of us
who have kids in school,
remind them their job is to be respectful and to learn.
It's their number one priority,
respectful of all their educators and their peers,
and we're going to lean into that
pretty aggressively with our guidance here.
-A number of school districts around the state
have run into budget crisis this year.
And in terms of just the basic framework for education here,
education funding,
that is still an issue that's up for debate.
People, you know, there are policy advocates
who are calling for an overhaul of the way
that the state apportions money to different schools.
Some think that the getting money --
directing more resources to districts
with higher cost of living leaves rural areas
which may have a harder time passing bonds
because the amount has to be higher.
The percentage has to be higher
if there's a smaller property base
and it sort of leaves them in the lurch in various ways.
Do you think the state is on the right course
and just needs to make adjustments
or should we overhaul our funding structure?
-They need to make big investments
because we fell behind after getting awfully close
to the national average in terms of
how much of our economy we put back in our schools.
We got close in 2019 and then we lost all that ground.
And so we're a half a percent of GDP behind.
That doesn't sound like a lot.
That's $4 billion a year.
So it's more investment to close gaps,
so students with disabilities, and high-poverty youth.
And so our budget proposal,
which will be out in two weeks, it addresses all of that,
but there are still reasons to overhaul the model.
The model is still written more than 20 years ago.
It doesn't at all reflect the fact
that we need more counselors and nurses in school sites,
which we've made great progress on, for example.
But yeah, there's always room for the model to change,
but let's not use that as an excuse not to invest today.
Special education, transportation,
these inflationary impacts on districts,
we're leaning into that aggressively.
It's the constitutional duty of the legislature.
I expect they will step up to it this year.
And then, you know, let's be super-clear.
Our legislature has made some good investments
and they've lowered dependence on levies.
They used to be almost 30% of school budgets.
They're down to 17% because the state's tried to fill that up.
So there has been progress made.
And the last thing I'll say, Mike,
is there's over a billion dollars a year
that goes directly into high-poverty communities
through what we call the learning assistance program.
Meals for kids,
which under my leadership and partnership
with the legislature,
we've doubled the number of kids getting breakfast and lunch.
We target money for migrant youth and students
who don't have English as their primary language.
Our biggest gaps get more money right now
but there's a better way and a simpler way to do that
and I think that's what people are exploring.
So I'm open to that completely but not if people say,
"While we explore it or study it for four years,
let's do nothing in the meantime."
I think we saw that in 2010 and 2011,
and after the court ultimately came out,
it took a long time for the legislature to invest
because they said, "Let's study how to do it."
We know what we have to do so let's invest now
while we're changing the model.
-In general,
do you think that districts have invested wisely
in their workforce and their local education system
with the funds that they've had,
and in particular with one-time federal funding in recent years?
-Well, we've been careful to tell districts along the way
this is one time so don't create permanent commitments to it.
And our districts did a fantastic job.
We just did the model, again.
All 50 states are ranked on
how efficiently they've spent their federal money.
We're number one in the nation.
We will get through our federal money faster than everyone else.
We're not asking for an extension.
We have states that are still leaving ten, 15,
20% of their money on the table
and asking for extensions from the feds.
That's not Washington. We were very efficient.
The challenge is it was used to back fill money
that was taken from districts
because of their enrollment decline.
So now the state money's gone in many districts
and now the federal one-time money goes away.
That's why districts are going to have to deal with
some pretty tough things over the next year or two.
What we say is, gosh,
if they're still spending their local levies
on special education, and transportation,
and insurance costs, and things that the state should pay for.
Then let's get the state to step up,
again, get back to the investment levels
that were there before 2019,
and we wouldn't be worrying about districts
in distress today.
Because the enrollment impacts have been so small.
It isn't the biggest issue for them.
It's losing money
and then really losing money to inflation.
And one-time federal money will not solve that long term.
-Just on that same point,
there's been some criticism
that your office should have taken a more forceful role
to make sure
that districts weren't going to wind up in the red.
Basically, once the money ran out, the federal money.
Is that fair?
-No. No. Our guidance was very clear.
Don't use this on permanent investments,
this one-time money.
Districts didn't. They did a good job.
Our districts are suffering from inflation,
a little bit of enrollment impact at 3.5% on average
across the country --
or across the state.
Our districts have done a fantastic job leaning
into the most difficult time of our education history
with the resources they have.
They are starved of money,
and special ed, and transportation,
and other programming areas.
That is the biggest risk to them right now.
They're still managing that. Out of 295 districts,
290 of them are managing their own business
and we're only intervening right now in five districts
to try to get them on the right side of the balance.
And only one needs significant intervention.
So we guided them well. They did a good job.
Everyone will want to deflect
and sort of Monday morning quarterback what
should have happened.
Our districts used one-time money for one-time things
but they have permanent impacts to their state funds
and those have got to get back filled now.
-Let's transition
to talk about testing and test scores in Washington.
According to the Children's Alliance and the Annie E.
Casey Foundation, the 2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book.
The most recent student proficiency data show
that 66% of fourth-graders in Washington
are not proficient in reading,
72% of eighth-graders are not proficient in math.
And overall,
Washington ranks 26th in the nation for education.
So at the top of the bottom half of the list.
What's your response to those numbers
and your position on testing, in general?
-Well, unfortunately, the numbers are wrong.
I really respect those organizations
but they use a word proficient that means something to us.
The average person says proficient means they can't read
and that's not what that data means at all.
So we've been really clear.
We worked with a national consortium.
We're trying to get people to understand that we use a one,
two, three, four test score system in our state,
four at the top, number one, students who are struggling.
Twos, threes, and fours are high school proficient.
They're high school equivalent or they're grading equivalent.
Threes and fours are on their way to college
without needing any remedial courses.
People are getting that wrong, including my opponent.
He keeps pointing to the students who get threes
and fours and saying they're the only ones who are at grade level
and everyone below that's not at grade level.
That's not at all what it is.
We've been trying to make this super-clear.
People intend to use this data this way I think
because they kind of want to nudge folks or harm public ed.
I want to be really clear.
It's three-quarters or more of students who are on grade level
because twos, threes, and fours are grade level.
Threes and fours are college ready
and those data are accurate to describe who's
college and university ready.
That's different than high school proficient.
And so we're going to keep trying to clarify this.
The other thing we always look at is relativity.
So we're working hard. Math scores are recovering well.
Reading scores are very flat.
I acknowledge that
and we're trying to create interventions there.
There's no question we've got to get back to
where we were in reading.
But there's only one national assessment that's common,
the NAEP scores,
National Assessment of Educational Progress.
And there are only two states in America by eighth grade
that outperform us in reading and only seven states
that outperform us in mathematics by eighth grade.
So we are a high-performing state.
That doesn't mean we're ranked third.
I'm always clear about this.
It means there are only two states
statistically outperforming us in reading
and then there are a bunch of states
that are very common after that
because we have common national standards.
And a fourth-grader in Massachusetts
should be at a reading level of a fourth-grader in Washington,
or California, or Texas.
So it's not to say that those systems were meant to rank.
It does tell you who's statistically outperforming you
and it's only two states in America in reading
and only seven states in America in mathematics.
We're doing pretty damn well but we've got a lot of work to do.
-So we are running low on time here,
but if you could, as quickly as possible,
anything we haven't addressed that you want to bring up
or anything you wanted to add?
-Well, this is a campaign episode
and I always love coming on to your show.
Normally, I'm wearing my superintendent hat,
but I'm running for reelection.
You've got my opponent, who will be with you, as well,
and I always think we never get to some other issues
that matter a ton,
which isn't just our policy values and all that.
It's experience. I'm a former classroom teacher.
Heck, I was a custodian, a summer custodian in schools,
at one point in my time, served on a school board,
worked in higher education for 14 years,
served in the legislature. Experience matters.
I've been a CFO
of a multibillion-dollar organization.
I am today the leader of our system that needs work,
and intervention, and progress.
But experience matters
and I believe I'm the only one that has that.
I believe my opponent does not have the experience
to do this job well and I deeply respect his military background.
That's very different than being trained as an educator.
-Well, we will have to leave it there.
Thank you very much, again, Chris Reykdal.
We do appreciate your time.
Still ahead, hear from the other candidate running
for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
David Olson joins us next. Stay with us.
Earlier, we spoke with the incumbent candidate running
for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Now we'll hear from the person running to unseat him.
Joining me now is OSPI candidate, David Olson.
Thank you very much for your time, today.
If you could, please,
just if elected, give us your top priorities
for public education in Washington
and any challenges that you intend to address.
-I think the absolute number one priority is to advocate
that the state legislature meet their constitutional duty
of fully funding basic ed,
specifically special education funding.
That would be my absolute number one priority.
Teachers are absolutely overwhelmed in the classroom.
They don't have enough para educator support,
especially for their special services/special needs kids.
And so the state is not meeting their duty
to fully fund special ed,
but basic ed, in general.
I want to make sure that we maintain academic rigor
so that our students are challenged in their curriculum.
And I believe that over the past eight years,
our public education has started to be dumbed down.
And parents are complaining to me
that the reason they're pulling their kids out of school
is they don't believe their kids are getting
enough academic rigor.
To prepare them for postsecondary,
whether it be four-year college, or trades,
or military, or whatever.
So those are certainly two critical areas
that I think we need to focus on.
And three, I think we need to do more to support students
that are struggling.
Especially in high poverty and some of the more districts
that are -- have more of a,
you know, BIPOC community, you know, people of color.
You know, and so rural
and high-poverty school district areas that kids are struggling.
So I'd like to see us do more to give those students
additional supports to help lift them up
so they can achieve academically.
-On the thread of academic achievement,
the Children's Alliance and the Annie E.
Casey Foundation reports.
That based on the most recent data,
66% of fourth-graders in Washington
are not proficient in reading,
72% of eighth-graders not proficient in math.
And that overall, Washington ranks 26th
in the nation for education.
Your opponent says that's not actually the case.
Those figures are not really accurate
and sort of represent a lack of understanding
about the grading system or the evaluation scale in place.
What's your take? -Well, I --
during one of our candidate forums before the primary,
both myself and the previous candidate, Reid Saaris,
both of us criticized him, as did the "Seattle Times."
That under his leadership,
we've gone from number eight in the nation
as a public education system to number 27.
So I agree with that data.
I think that he's trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
I'm not sure where he's pulling his numbers,
but using the OSPI data and the NAEP data that you referenced,
we're absolutely going in the wrong direction.
Even if you looked at OSP data -- OSPI data from '22-'23,
less than half our kids in the state,
around 50% of the kids in our state can read at grade level
and about a third can pass our math and science.
And so I'm not the only person that agrees that that's correct
and I believe that Chris Reykdal is hiding the numbers,
if you will.
-Do you have a strategy to improve test scores,
specifically?
-I think the --
when I talk to teachers around the state,
they tell me that there's several issues
that impact their classroom.
One is student discipline.
Cell phones is another one.
And absenteeism.
And so being able to address those issues
and find the root causes of what those are I think
would help because the teachers tell me they're overwhelmed.
At first, their most --
the highest priority is student discipline,
trying to be able to get a child that's acting out under control.
Oftentimes, they have to, based on current rules,
they have to take an entire class out
and leave the unruly student in the class.
And I think that's unfair to the teacher
and the rest of the class.
Teachers tell me that they've wanted to leave the profession
because they can't get their students off their cell phones.
And when they ask them to get off the phone,
the student will say, "Make me."
So a year ago, my school district got --
passed a resolution eliminating cell phones in our schools
and banning social media,
so that had a really positive impact.
And then the teachers are not getting
the para educator support
that they need to help take the onus off.
So when you have [indistinct]
or special needs students and the rest are gen ed
and you have to focus more of your time on the special needs.
You tend to put the rest of the students on a digital device
and teach digitally versus developing a relationship
with the kids like you
and I probably had when we were at school.
-If we could go back to the funding issue for a second,
in terms of ways
to maximize the benefit of the available funds out there,
only so many funds to go around.
Do you think, I mean, are schools and districts
making the best decisions with the funding
from your perspective?
-I believe many of them are not.
And I think part of the fact is that OSPI,
under the current leadership,
does not do enough to educate the schools
and the school boards on how best to utilize their funds.
They'll push the money out
and they'll give them their monthly apportionment,
but oftentimes,
schools don't have enough education on
how best to spend that money.
I've taught the school superintendents around the state
and they say that transportation funding is
critically underfunded the way the model is and the special ed.
So most of the superintendents tell me
that we can just get the special ed funding and transportation
under control, it would really go a long way.
My school district did not fall victim to the funding crisis
that many of the school districts
are going through right now.
I have a public finance background.
We have amazing CFO.
Our school board asks tough questions
and we have monthly budget updates
but many school boards don't.
They put their finance documents into a consent agenda
and just any questions
as to approve the consent agenda
without actually doing a deep dive into the budget.
And I think that's to their detriment
that they don't do that.
So as superintendent,
I would encourage school boards to take public finance training
so they understand how to read a basic public finance document.
And I would encourage them to have monthly finance updates
from their CFO or budget manager like we do in mine.
And we also put our entire budget online for review
so we're not hiding anything.
And so I think that -- I don't think it's intentional
that they're not spending it correct.
I just think they could use some guidance from OSPI
on how best to utilize that funds.
-Just to focus on school construction funding,
for a second.
The way the state constitution is written that school,
you know, basic education funding comes from one pot
of money and then school construction is something else.
And the way the state legislature appropriates money
requires a local bond initiative to pass,
but that is difficult.
Particularly for the districts
with the smaller property bases, the rural ones.
The ones that typically
or may have some of the oldest buildings
or need the most upgrades in their --
and the least able to afford those repairs.
Do you have a straightforward solution to that
or do you think that's going to require
a constitutional amendment?
-I'd like to see the state do more
to fix the capital fund issue.
I think especially rural school districts are
not getting enough from the state to help them,
the ones that have trouble passing those capital bonds.
Even the ones that do pass capital bonds,
it's really onerous process
to go through the various steps
to get all that funding in order and then to get SCAP funding.
And then to be able to use other, you know,
other things that you get from building a new school.
So if you're building a new school to reduce overcrowding,
you can get extra money from the state to reduce overcrowding.
Push against impact fees
that when someone buys a house or builds a new home,
they have to pay impact fees for that and schools
can use that money to buy portables and things like that.
But the way that schools are funded right now,
the per square foot is really, really high.
So your home that you live in might,
if you went to sell it, might sell for $400 a square foot,
but a school might cost $900 a square foot.
So it's really,
really challenging to get some of these bonds
passed because of that.
Under the current superintendent,
he's used his bully pulpit to,
on the Department of Natural Resources board,
to discontinue some old-growth forest harvesting.
And the revenue from that timber harvest
goes to school construction, especially rural schools.
So, you know, taking that funding off the table
from our rural schools
I think is a negative impact them for consider
that we don't fully fund schools now.
For him to advocate for taking that timber sales off the table
for those schools I think is doing them a disservice.
-So we're running on just a little over a minute left here
and I went to get to two more things
that give you a chance to close us out here.
So you mentioned this.
"Seattle Times" had criticized your opponent
related to some of the test scores policy,
that sort of thing, I believe.
You also were criticized for some remarks
you made about four-year universities
during a convention.
Do you care to clarify anything you said
or do you stand by those remarks?
-What I said was that I was in the military for 28 years.
I was a Navy electrician.
I was a Navy diver, an underwater welder.
Those are all skilled trade blue-collar jobs
and I'm very supportive of the skilled trades
and making sure that we give our students
additional pathways other than a four-year university.
I think they should have the opportunity to go to four-year
if they want, skilled trades, technical,
or in the military like I did.
So I was joking when that happened and said,
"Hey, if all the kids go to trade school
and get a skilled trades degree and all the schools --
four-year universities go bankrupt,
I'd be fine with that." I was joking.
You know, I said I was being facetious.
I have a four-year degree. My wife's a school teacher.
My son's a school teacher, and three of my four kids
have college degrees.
My oldest son is in the skilled trades.
So I told the "Seattle Times" I was joking
but they chose not to accept that explanation.
-We're running very low on time.
If you could, though, as briefly as possible, anything
I didn't get to, anything you want to add, closing remarks?
-I just that I make an analogy whenever I have a debate,
or with the "Seattle Times," or whoever.
In professional sports,
if a team is losing repeatedly year over year,
they fire the head coach. Earlier this year,
the Seattle Kraken fired their coach after one bad season.
In my opinion, under the current leadership,
we've had eight failed seasons.
Going from number eight in the nation
to number 27 in the nation academically.
I think it's time that the people of Washington
fire the coach and bring in someone new.
And I hope that they'll choose me.
-We're out of time. We'll have to leave it there.
Thank you, again, very much, David Olson.
We appreciate your time. -Thank you for having me on.
-Thank you for watching.
Please join us next week for more in-depth interviews
you won't find anywhere else.
I'm Mike McClanahan. Have a great week.
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