Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap

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Twenty and a half years ago, my wife and I moved to Central Kitsap, with our then 9-month-old son.

Daniel went to Silver Ridge Elementary School for his first 7 years of school; then to Central Kitsap Junior High for three years, and finally to Central Kitsap High School for his final three years, during which he took several AP classes and scored high enough on the AP tests to earn college credit in math, computer science, physics, history and government, and some others.

He attended University of British Columbia for a year, then transferred two years ago to UW, majoring in environmental science/ resource management in the UW College of Forestry. In part because of those AP credits, he’s about to graduate after three years of college, and will be continuing in a graduate program at UW next year to get master’s degrees in public administration and environmental science.

His senior capstone research project focused on ways the U.S. Forest Service might be able to improve it’s process for creating environmental impact statements for proposed projects. As part of the capstone requirement, he had to give a 15-minute presentation of his project for faculty and students at the College of Forestry. I was very proud to be able to attend his presentation this week.

As a parent, it’s been a sweet reward to watch him grow up here in Kitsap and become an adult who is always pushing to learn new things.

I feel very lucky. But while I know that we supported his academic path, it was Daniel’s desire and his drive to learn that got him to this point.

I wish that every parent in Kitsap could watch their child achieve the same thing. Unfortunately, I know that some Kitsap children do not graduate from high school, and many who graduate do not take the next step to further their education past high school. As parents, as a community, as a society, we need to value education more and expect more from our kids. We need to demand that they push themselves by taking harder classes, not take the easy options in junior high and high school, but as parents we also need to do whatever we can to make sure that college for them is a financial possibility, not an impossible dream.

Good luck to the Central Kitsap, Olympic and Klahowya graduates of 2009. Don’t let the ceremony at the Kitsap Pavilion be the end of your educational dreams.

— Jeff

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The Washington Legislature has passed a bill redefining what a basic education is. It’s probably the most significant bill state lawmakers will approve in a generation.

Providing the financial support for to educate every child of school age in the state’s public schools is the “paramount” duty of the Legislature, according to the state constitution. Passage of this bill is an acknowledgement that state lawmakers have been constitutionally derelict.

That’s not to say the state doesn’t spend a lot on education already. The annual bill is about $7.5 billion. But what lawmakers admitted in passing this bill is that $7.5 billion doesn’t pay for a basic education for every student in Washington’s public schools. Legislators redefined what they expect public schools to do 15 years ago when they set new standards for the curriculum and for student achievement. Now, 15 years later, they have finally admitted that those increased standards cost more money than what the state formula for paying for education has provided.

They passed this bill under pressure. Several school districts have sued the state claiming that state funding is inadequate to pay for the basic education of students. A similar court case more than 30 years ago resulted in a court-ordered overhaul of the funding formula, and, dare I say, the current court case probably will have the same result.

My opinion is that Central Kitsap and the other area school districts should have joined in the case. They all face significant budget shortfalls.

The question is whether this act of the Legislature makes the pending case moot, or whether it prompts the court hearing the case to force the state to move faster. Because the bill passed by the Legislature earlier this week gives Olympia 10 years to step up the funding for schools. So if funding has been inadequate to pay for the education the state demands for the past 15 years, it would, under this bill, remain inadequate for another 10. I wonder how a court may react to that.

— Jeff