No more ‘social warriors.’ Choose the new Richland School Board members carefully | Opinion

Richland voters wisely voted to remove three problematic school board members from office this month. Now public officials need to show equal wisdom in selecting replacements. Temperance and deference to the public should guide their decisions.

Kari Williams, Semi Bird and Audra Byrd clearly needed to go. They had violated their duty to serve students and taxpayers. They flagrantly and illegally defied lawful Washington state orders during the pandemic by voting to make masks optional in schools.

It was a rush job, putting administrators, teachers and families in an untenable position. Schools closed, and the trio jeopardized state funding.

Voters responded to that needlessly manufactured crisis by overwhelmingly ousting the three in a recall election. They’ll be officially out of office Tuesday when Benton County election officials certify the results.

Then only two of the five school board members will remain, not enough for the school board legally to conduct business.

A couple of weeks remain until students return to classrooms. That leaves precious little time to begin filling the seats.

Educational Service District 123, the regional authority that assists districts with public education from Clarkston to Prosser, plans to act quickly to fill the first seat and restore a working majority. ESD officials will begin accepting applications a half an hour after the recalled members are out on Tuesday. They plan to choose an appointee at a special meeting Aug. 29.

Once the school board has three members and therefore a working majority, it will be able to appoint people to fill the other two vacancies.

Both ESD and Richland School Board should look for some very specific qualities in appointees.

The seat that ESD will fill and one of the others will be up for grabs on the November ballot. The people selected to serve a handful of months should be competent placeholders, not anyone who seeks election this fall.

Incumbency is an advantage in an election, even appointed incumbency. The voters created the vacancies, so let the voters choose who fills them without putting a thumb on the scale.

The third seat is tougher. Whoever the new school board chooses will serve out the two years remaining on the term.

That person therefore needs to hit the ground running. Someone with a background in education would be ideal. If that person chose to run for the office when it comes up in 2025, he or she would have won any incumbency advantage with a record of performance in office.

The most critical characteristic for all of the new school board members, be they elected or appointed, is temperament. The last thing Richland needs are three more social warriors who want to turn local schools into another front in a national culture war.

Find nonpartisans for what is supposed to be a nonpartisan position, not people who will drag schools into more political ugliness.

Finally, the ESD and school board should embrace transparency throughout the process. That means sharing the list of candidates with the public and giving residents an opportunity to weigh in. The ESD, unfortunately, already has indicated that it is hewing toward keeping the public in the dark.

It will secretly select finalists. Then it will interview those finalists in public but without an opportunity for public comment. Finally it will again go behind closed doors to select a winner.

The public deserves better especially when the new board goes to fill the other two seats.

This is a challenging time for Richland schools, but it also is an opportunity to rebuild trust. Choose wisely and in partnership with the people whose children will attend those schools and whose taxes will pay for them.