2 challengers motivated by COVID closures winning seats on Richland School Board

Two challengers upset about how the Richland School District handled COVID are winning in races for the school board.

Ben Griggs, Audra Byrd and Semi Bird all ran for the board on similar platforms and got support from parents who didn’t want to see students required to wear masks, socially distance or take other precautions.

They each were critical of how the district handled COVID-19, and didn’t want the district to teach Critical Race Theory and wanted to maintain local control of how sex education was taught.

The district has pointed out that Critical Race Theory is not taught in the school district and sex education has not changed.

Now, two are leading their races to be a position on the school board.

In the only race to still have an incumbent, longtime school board member Rick Jansons was leading Griggs, a professional engineer and project manager.

Jansons had 6,580 votes or 53% while his opponent got 5,696 votes or 46%.

In a race that saw 16-year Richland school board veteran Heather Cleary defeated in the primary, former teacher Audra Byrd is leading bilingual educator Danica Garcia.

Byrd had 6,517 votes, or 53%, while Garcia had 5,869 votes, or 47%.

Finally, in one of the most contentious races, business owner Semi Bird was leading former Tri-Cities math teacher Elizabeth Vann-Clark.

The two candidates are competing for a position that was left vacant by Ken Gosney, who replaced Rick Donahoe.

Bird received 6,391 votes, or 52%, while Vann-Clark had 5,854 votes, or 48%.

Countywide, 28,662 votes were counted at the Benton County Auditor’s Office on Tuesday, according to elections officials. Another round of results are expected to be out on Wednesday afternoon.

The auditor’s office expects about 10,000 votes are left to be counted. It’s unknown how many will affect these races.

This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 9:05 PM.