Two candidates, both with long ties to Evergreen Public Schools, are vying for a seat on the school board.
Incumbent Victoria Bradford has been on the board for 16 years; she’s served as the board’s president and both her daughters graduated from the district’s high schools.
Challenger Frank Decker is a former employee of the district, his wife remains one, and he imagines his grandchildren, like his children, will someday attend Evergreen schools.
Both tout their experience but, if elected, have different goals for their tenure.
Bradford sees student poverty as one of the district’s biggest challenges.
The number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunches has spiked to about 50 percent of the district’s population, she said.
“If we don’t have kids in the classroom that are ready to learn and have their basic needs met, they aren’t learning … Statistically, when you look at the children who have the most challenging test scores, they are almost always children that come from poverty,” Bradford said, adding that the district has started training employees to identify how to be effective in such scenarios.
Decker believes one of the biggest challenges is improving Evergreen’s on-time graduation rate, which is 80.3 percent. The rate is higher than Vancouver Public Schools’ rate of 73.1 percent and Battle Ground Public Schools’ graduation rate of 79.6 percent.
Decker believes focusing on early literacy and carving out more technical education classes and programs would help.
“Evergreen does a phenomenal job with AP (advanced placement) classes and offerings … That’s the big push and focus; those classes are excellent,” Decker said. But he added “they aren’t for everybody.”
Decker, 48, is currently the executive supervisor of information technology and assessment with the Centennial School District in Oregon.
Decker is motivated to run, in part, because he believes the next school board will select a new superintendent.
“The most important thing the school board will do is hire a new superintendent. John Deeder will be retiring and I want to be part of the hiring team,” Decker said.
A spokeswoman for the district said Deeder has not set a retirement date.
Decker said after working in the district as a teacher and technology coordinator for more than a decade, he saw a “shift in the leadership style at the district level” to a “top-down authoritarian leadership style.”
Evergreen’s schools are diverse places, Decker said, and he would like a superintendent who gives individual schools autonomy to “do what’s best for their population of kids.”
Bradford, 56, who owns Comfort Interiors, said despite her long tenure on the board, she’s still passionate about where the district is heading. She points to the Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) Health and Bioscience High School as one of the district’s achievements during her tenure.
It’s the only school of its kind in the state.
“It’s a perfect example of an innovation in education that’s working,” she said.
Decker also praised the school, but criticized its creation. At a time when basic programs and staffing levels were slashed, he didn’t believe investing in a new school was the correct decision.
“It’s making decisions to spend money in the best interest of adults and what it makes the district look like, a new medical high school,” Decker said, “rather than putting that money back into programs that directly affect the students.”
Lauren Dake: 360-735-4534; twitter.com/LaurenDake; lauren.dake@columbian.com
