Fighting federal intrusion, providing community support among top issues for Richland School Board candidates

The current state of the Richland School District is encouraging, says the challenger to Richland School Board incumbent Rick Donahoe.

Ron Higgins, a retired engineer who has worked as a substitute teacher for five years, says the district’s schools are in good shape and he has no specific criticism of Donahoe or the board. Rather, he said he’s running for the Director No. 3 position in the general election to stem what he calls a tide of federal intrusion into education that will only drag students down.

“The federal government has no business in education,” Higgins recently told the Herald editorial board. “It’s the 10th Amendment.”

Donahoe acknowledged the board has to work with federal and state mandates. He said he is more concerned about what he and the board can do to serve students locally, ensuring they have the resources necessary to succeed and secure good jobs.

“We have more homeless students than ever before,” Donahoe said during the same editorial board meeting.

Ballots for the election were mailed last week and must be postmarked, in the Benton County Auditor’s Office or in a designated dropbox by 8 p.m. Nov. 3.

Richland School Board members receive $50 per meeting and can receive no more than $4,800 a year. The position is for a four-year term.

Donahoe has served on the school board for five years. He has worked as a teacher, chemical engineer and project manager and has earned three degrees. He is the CEO of the Children’s Reading Foundation, the national organization overseeing the local Mid-Columbia chapter and others across the country.

Higgins, a retired Marine, has primarily worked as a substitute teacher in math classrooms but says he’s covered all subjects and worked at all grade levels. He was a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction in the 2012 general election but lost to incumbent Randy Dorn. He also ran unsuccessfully for the the board seat held by incumbent Heather Cleary in 2013.

Both men share some of the same concerns, including the state not providing enough to pay for K-12 education. Donahoe characterized the state’s failure to raise teacher wages until this year, seven years since the last raise, as immoral.

Transparency in employee contracts could be a good thing, the candidates said, though a good relationship between district administrators and teacher representatives is much more critical. And teachers do need to be evaluated on student success, though any such review needs to be specifically tailored to what a teacher can achieve in the classroom and not the circumstances of a struggling student’s home life, they said.

“When you factor in students like that, I understand why teachers are reticent (to be evaluated),” Higgins said.

But Higgins is more focused on fighting issues such as the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and other mandates he says are detrimental to student well-being, such as co-ed high school physical education classes, which he says fails to acknowledge the differences between boys and girls.

He’s also critical of what he calls varying behavioral standards for different ethnic groups in schools and the eagerness of courts to get involved in education policy, including the state Supreme Court’s order to the Legislature to fully fund basic education.

“Some people are very troubled by that,” Higgins said.

Donahoe stood behind Common Core, which he stressed is a set of educational standards and not a curriculum, and said that co-ed physical education classes are an option for students in the district’s high schools.

The bulk of his time on the board and where he wants to continue to work is on helping students. He said roughly a third of Richland’s students are now receiving free or reduced price meals, a sharp jump from when he started on the board.

Donahoe helped earlier this year to bring in Communities In Schools, a support organization that connects students and families with those providing food, shelter and other services and it has so far served 1,400 students in the district. He also has stepped in personally in some cases.

“My wife and I took in a homeless student two years ago,” Donahoe said. “She had nowhere to go, parents had divorced and left.”

The goal now is to recruit more people in the community, as well as businesses, to support the district’s efforts, he said. That will help ensure students are better able to focus on school and secure a job which are increasingly requiring some level of post-secondary education.

This story was originally published October 19, 2015 at 9:09 PM with the headline "Fighting federal intrusion, providing community support among top issues for Richland School Board candidates."