by Grace Deng, Washington State Standard
October 14, 2024
In the race to oversee Washington’s public schools, incumbent superintendent Chris Reykdal has sought to frame challenger David Olson as a far-right extremist with Trumpian values — a charge that Olson vehemently denies.
“I’ve been reelected multiple times with 60% of the vote because the members of my community like what I’m doing on the school board,” said Olson, a Peninsula School Board member. “If I was some wacko, some extremist, like Reykdal is going to try to paint me out to be, I wouldn’t easily get reelected.”
Where Olson, a self-proclaimed moderate conservative, stands on diversity, equity and inclusion issues is up for debate: He told the Standard that “diverse students is what makes our country great” and that he believes in “equal opportunity, not equal outcome.”
“I believe that all students should be treated fairly,” Olson said. “There are schools in our state right now that the parents tell me their kid can literally just put their name on the test and they get a C even if they don’t answer a question…and I don’t think that’s fair to our students.”
However, at the state Republican convention in April, where he sought and received the party’s endorsement, Olson said he’d led “the first school board in the state to ban controversial social issues like critical race theory, DEI and all that horrible stuff.” (Although the two candidates are aligned with the major parties, the race is technically non-partisan.)
Olson later told The Seattle Times that he was caught up in the convention’s “weird environment.”
“We face an opponent who has said some very extreme things and we’ll make sure they get out there,” said Reykdal, a Democrat, comparing Olson’s views to Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the next Republican presidency.
While Olson’s views on DEI have been called into question, there’s a related issue where he has remained consistent: support for local control. Local control refers to the ability of a district to run its day-to-day operations, like curriculum, budget and policy, as it sees fit, with limited state interference.
Proponents of local control often argue that school boards are elected by their community and are thus more directly accountable to their constituents. It can also allow districts to be innovative and meet unique needs of their communities, said Arik Korman, director of the League of Education Voters.
“I want to work with school boards and be a partner for school boards,” Olson said. “‘I go around the state talking to superintendents and say, ‘What is it you need if I win? How can I help you?’”
But local control, when applied in a certain way, can have implications for diversity, equity and inclusion, Korman said, potentially weakening efforts in these areas — which is why some are concerned about Olson’s approach.
“Local control isn’t bad, but it can also have unintended consequences that can make it harder for vulnerable students to access their education. A balance needs to be found,” Korman said.
“If you can step on the civil rights of a student and have no repercussions under the umbrella or shield of local control — that’s not okay,” Korman added.
Local control and LGBTQ+ rights
Reykdal often says that the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction comes with a large bully pulpit but limited power. Washington is largely a “local control state,” meaning that districts control how they spend most of the money allocated to them by the state.
But that doesn’t mean the office doesn’t have any power: it fields civil rights complaints, shapes policy and practice for districts, channels state money to districts, requests legislation — which helps get policy proposals on the desks of lawmakers — and can take over the operations of a school district with dire budget problems.
“There are a number of mechanisms OSPI can use to encourage or compel districts to shift practice,” Korman said.
Conservatives argue that Reykdal uses these powers to undermine local control.
“The way he wants to run things is not how we want to run things on the east side of the state,” said Micah Valentine, a Kennewick School Board member who endorsed Olson. “He doesn’t care about that. He wants a centralized government.”
“He pushes for bills that are political and sexual. He pushed for a bill to teach an LGBTQ agenda — to force that into schools,” said Valentine, referring to a state mandate to integrate LGBTQ+ contributions and perspectives into school curricula.
Olson and his backers also say that local control is a moderate position.
“I don’t think it’s far-right to say that the local school districts should have more say in how they run their district, rather than the state getting too involved,” said Deanna Martinez, board chair at Mainstream Republicans of Washington, a socially moderate group.
Valentine said he doesn’t know if Olson shares his beliefs around diversity, equity and inclusion and the LGBTQ+ curriculum bill. But he does know that Olson, unlike Reykdal, “will allow local school boards to govern themselves,” adding that he believes his community “adamantly rejects” having pride flags in schools and trans girls playing in women’s sports.
“I can run my school board better without him,” Valentine said of Reykdal.
That kind of thinking is worrisome to progressives and advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, who say Olson’s election could be detrimental for marginalized students and support Reykdal’s view on important limitations for local control.
“David and I both actually believe in a lot of local control,” Reykdal said. “[But] the job is to offer local control within the law, including protecting the civil rights of kids, whether they are gay and lesbian, whether they are transgender.”
“I just think the growing number of MAGA conservative school boards that are trying to ban student expression is something he would call local control,” Reykdal said, adding that if a policy violates federal or state protections against discrimination based on sex, then it’s the superintendent’s job to step in and enforce the law.
Local control and academic achievement
Conservatives often frame this conversation in terms of academic achievement: Both Olson and Valentine said Olson was focused on getting politics out of schools in favor of letting educators and districts focus on core academic knowledge, like math and reading.
“I think that a kid, regardless of their sexual orientation or their political affiliation, should be able to walk into a classroom and receive 100% from their teachers,” Valentine said. “I think that when we start sexualizing these things, and we start to promote LGBTQ things, I think it just takes our eye off the ball.”
“We are not focusing on achievement anymore,” he added. “We’re focusing on all the other things that don’t matter.”
Progressives, however, argue that the local control conversation only seems to apply to issues that conservatives don’t agree with.
“One of the greatest threats for public education are the attacks that are coming from the far right,” said Larry Delaney, president of the Washington Education Association. “We need to be vigilant against book bans and limiting what can be taught.”
“We strongly believe that educators should be able to teach the truth, and sadly, there are people — not only in our state but our country too — who don’t believe that’s what’s best,” Delaney added.
Data also shows that LGBTQ+ students and other marginalized groups face poorer educational outcomes, in part due to how discrimination in school impacts their performance.
Other research demonstrates that teaching LGBTQ+ curriculum positively impacts academic motivation, the school environment and student well-being. Students in California who learned about LGBTQ+ issues at school, for example, reported less bullying of LGBTQ+ students.
“We want students to feel like they belong,” said Korman, whose organization is non-partisan. “If local control gets in the way of students feeling a sense of belonging, essentially, a stressed brain can’t learn, and then we’ll see a decline in student outcomes.”
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