Every seat on the Pasco School Board is up for election. All but 1 are going unchallenged
With only a day left for candidates to file for election this year, most seats on the Pasco School Board are going unchallenged.
As of Thursday morning, four of the board’s five incumbents had filed to run in the primary in August. And only one has drawn a challenger.
“I feel like with COVID, and with all the political things you see come out of COVID, we forgot that students are at the front and center. And that’s what the school board should be doing and teachers as well,” said Amanda Brown, who’s challenging Steven Christensen.
She’s a dual language teacher at Fuerza Elementary School in Kennewick, but lives in Pasco. She said she’s running because she’s “all about the students.”
All five of Pasco’s school board seats are up for election this year.
That’s because the district redrew its school board boundaries in January and created director districts for four of its five seats in an effort to comply with Washington’s 2018 Voting Rights Act.
The goal was to give more legislative representation to the district’s majority Latino and Hispanic constituency. Previously, school board members were elected on an at-large basis, meaning they were selected by a majority of voters across the entire district.
The process established two Latino-majority director districts.
Filing week began Monday and ends at 4 p.m. Friday, May 20.
So far, Brown and Christensen look like they may be the only candidates for District 3, which makes up most of northeast Pasco and the neighborhoods around the Tri-Cities Airport.
Scott Lehrman is running for District 1, Amy Philips for District 4 and Steve Simmons for the at-large Position 5 seat.
No one had filed yet for District 2, but that was likely to change by Friday. Jesse Campos is the incumbent in that seat.
Candidates will run in the Aug. 2 primary election. The top two vote recipients from each race then move on to the Nov. 8 general election, and the winner of that race will take office following the election certification.
There is no cost to file for a school board because the nonpartisan positions are unpaid.
Pasco is the only school district with school board seats up for election this year. Local elections, including school board and city council races, generally take place in years that end in odd numbers.
New school board districts
Two of the director districts — Nos. 1 and 2 — will serve for only a year before they’re up for reelection again in 2023. These two districts make up most of the neighborhoods around downtown, southwest and southeast Pasco.
Director districts 3, 4 and the at-large seat will only serve three-year terms starting in 2023. After that first wave of staggered elections, though, all seat holders will serve four-year terms.
This changes has been in development since 2017, when community advocate Felix Vargas first began calling for changes to the district’s elections system.
The board began studying the state and federal voting rights laws, as well as lawsuits that were then ongoing in the city of Yakima, city of Pasco and Franklin County that ultimately resulted in changes to those cities’ at-large election systems.
“The board learned about ways in which at-large election systems can have the effect of diluting the votes of community population groups,” reads a recent post on the district’s website.
“The board also learned that without a change to state law, there was no process available at that time that allowed Washington school districts to proactively change an at-large election system to a district-based election system.”
Starting this year, school district voters will only vote in the race that corresponds to the director district where they live.
More filing week coverage from the Tri-City Herald can be found online.
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 12:59 PM.
