I took a deep breath as a parent and enrolled my son in kindergarten in the Bremerton School District. That was in 2006. He is now in his last year at Naval Avenue Elementary (Go Dolphins!). Naval Avenue is the only school in the district that is pre-kindergarden through third grade.
Even though he had attended a local pre-school that is now a partner in early childhood education with the Bremerton School District, he struggled with the all-day kindergarten setting. To help him as much as I could as a parent, I cut back on my working hours to part time, I volunteered in the classroom one day a week for the entire year, I joined the PTA and I started attending school board meetings. It has been four years and I have not looked back. Instead, I’ve steadily been increasing my knowledge and involvement within the district. I have served on various committees and task forces and still attend many school board meetings and study sessions every year.
Currently the Bremerton School District is running out of time to get its cohesive act together. In the next couple of years every district in this state will be facing a budgetary cliff that will bring many of them to the very edge of financial solvency. Decisions being made right now are either laying the ground work necessary for future survival or are continuing to steer districts towards a path of eventual bankruptcy.
The biggest problem right now is that there are still too many factions within the district that are putting their own self-preservation first and the overall educational improvements to the kids second. Too many factions that are so afraid of allowing the existing process and its participants the opportunity to go about making their recommendations in an honest, straightforward, unrestricted way that they have deliberately engineered certain programs and issues off the table and out of bounds for consideration or continued discussion. This is wrong and it needs to stop.
The Bremerton community as a whole needs to know that it has citizens, parents, educators and district staff members who are willing to set aside their differences, come together and do the extremely hard work of outlining what we want to see in the way of education for our own children. Collectively we have ideas for reform, correction and improvements. We simply need to be allowed to go about our work, without fear, without obstacles and without the heavy thumb of the district pressing down upon us when we discuss options that they might not be accepting of or entirely comfortable with.
Coming up next week is a unique opportunity to learn more about education reform in Washington state. The League of Women Voters is hosting a forum at Central Kitsap High School’s cafeteria on Tuesday, April 20 from 7 to 9 p.m. Guest speakers Isabel Munoz-Colon, a budget analyst with the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Tom Ahearne, lawyer for an ongoing lawsuit challenging the way the state pays for education, will discuss the underfunding of Washington state schools as well as steps needed toward school finance reform. If you want to get serious about fixing education in Washington and in Bremerton, please attend.
