Teacher challenges 3-term Pasco incumbent in the hottest of 3 school races
All seats on the Pasco School Board are up for re-election Nov. 8 after the board switched to a district-based elections system to give neighborhoods greater say over who represents them.
Eight candidates are running for five seats on the school board.
And two incumbents who have served three terms are being challenged. Amanda Brown is challenging Steven Christensen for District 3 (Northeast Pasco).
And Amy Phillips is defending her seat against Trevor Cosby to represent District 4 (North Pasco, unincorporated Franklin County).
Incumbent Steve Simmons, who was elected last year, is being challenged by Stella Trevino for the at-large position.
Scott Lehrman and John Kennedy are running unopposed for their seats representing District 1 (Southwest Pasco) and District 2 (Downtown and Southeast Pasco).
Lehrman is a two-term school board member who works as a Hanford chemical engineer. And Kennedy, a newcomer who will replace outgoing board member Jesse Campos, is an adjunct professor at Columbia Basin College.
Because of the redistricting process, those two candidates will serve for a year before they’ll need to run again in November 2023.
Pasco School Board members, who do not get paid, evaluate the district’s superintendent, adopt policies, monitor the district’s progress toward its goals and manage through the budgeting process millions in local, state and federal spending. All the positions are nonpartisan.
The next board also will be responsible for championing passage of a bond measure next February to build the district’s third comprehensive high school. Several candidates say its passage is essential to addressing overcrowding.
Only three of the nine candidates — Kennedy, Christensen and Brown — responded to a questionnaire sent by the Tri-City Herald, asking their stances on various education issues.
Most contested race
Christensen and Brown offered two different views on school governance.
Brown, a mother of two children in Pasco schools, says her perspective as a working teacher is needed on the school board.
“School board decisions often have ripple effects that go all the way down to the classroom level,” she wrote in a questionnaire sent by the Tri-City Herald. “Some members of our local school board have a disconnect with what is happening every day in classrooms.”
Christensen disagrees.
As the oldest board member he said he would better represent the older population in the district and noted that Pasco School Board business rarely has to do with directly addressing education work in the classroom.
“We don’t direct principals, and we certainly don’t direct the teachers in the classroom,” he wrote. “We set policy, interface with the community, approve budgets, set bonds and levy rates, make sure our buildings are adequate and provide direction to the superintendent. My experience, both as a board member and as a community member, makes me a more qualified candidate to perform board functions.”
Christensen works as a nuclear ventilation engineer on the Hanford nuclear reservation. His family has lived in Pasco for 21 years. He’s been involved in Boy Scouts of America as a scoutmaster and with activities in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He also describes himself as a conservative, and says he’s a big believer in teaching individual liberties.
Christensen said it “speaks to the character of each of our board members” that they didn’t let Washington state’s mask mandate overshadow the duty of educating students during the pandemic. He said he didn’t favor masks in schools, but he “dutifully wore” one during meetings in service of the board’s work and business.
Overcrowding and academic gaps
Christensen’s priorities for the board include addressing COVID-caused learning loss, addressing overcrowding and helping students feel a sense of belonging at Pasco schools.
“I ran originally to make sure the students in our district were getting the best education possible with the resources available. I am running again for the same reason – to make sure our students get the best education they can get with the resources available,” he wrote.
Pasco schools tend to have lower state testing scores compared with their peers in Kennewick or Richland. Last spring’s Smarter Balance Assessment scores showed that about 20% of students met grade level math standards, 31% met English standards and 28% met science standards.
Students in Pasco, and across Washington state, saw considerable learning loss during the COVID pandemic. It’s expected to take several more years to catch students up to where they were in 2019.
Having grown up in the Tri-Cities, Brown told the Herald she would focus on learning loss, overcrowding and “creating a culture of belonging and dignity” if elected.
She contends the board is in need of fresh ideas.
She would like to see Pasco use a more thorough curriculum adoption committee, similar to one that she chairs in Kennewick.
“While I don’t think the board has ultimately done anything wrong, I think that it can do better at supporting programs that benefit all students such as free meals for all students, adoption of a new English and Spanish Language Arts curriculum and professional development for teachers,” she said.
Both Brown and Christensen are fluent Spanish speakers in a district where a majority of voters are Latino.
Other races
▪ Little information is available on Trevino, who’s challenging Simmons for his at-large seat. She has not raised any campaign funds and no information was listed in the statewide voters pamphlet.
Simmons, a preventative maintenance manager at Hanford, was part of a slate of conservative-backed candidates who filed for office in 2021 because of frustrations over COVID restrictions.
It was later learned that he had convictions for fourth-degree domestic assault but that didn’t prevent him from serving on the board, and he told the Herald at time that he had learned a lot about conflict resolution and relationships in the years since.
▪ Crosby, who’s challenging Phillips, works as a sales manager at Trailer Boss in Pasco. He has not raised any campaign funds, according to PDC filings.
Public posts from his Facebook page show Crosby wants America to be a “10 commandment type Christian nation.” He’s also called Gov. Jay Inslee a “domestic terrorist,” made doubts into the effectiveness of face masks during the COVID pandemic, and said “if you’re not an American we will get rid of you, one way or the other.”
Phillips is a three-term board member. She’s worked as a substitute teacher for seven years, and currently works as a small business owner.
▪ John Kennedy, who has no challenger for the position being vacated by Campos, was the only other candidate to respond to the Herald questionnaire.
He said the biggest issues facing Pasco schools, Kennedy says, are the social and emotional well-being of students, student career and college readiness and addressing future district growth.
He’s lived in Pasco for two years and works as economic resilience coordinator at the Benton-Franklin Council of Governments. He’s also an adjunct professor of history at WSU Tri-Cities, Columbia Basin College and Indiana University Kokomo.
He said he comes from a family of educators, and is running to be an advocate for “all of our students, educators, bus drivers, and support staff.”
