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Open Letter to the Tahoma and Kent School Districts, Regarding a Proposed Change to the WSSDA Bylaws
by the Tahoma Values PAC team
Our group has received information about an attempt to change the bylaws of the Washington State School Directors’ Association, or WSSDA for short. Their mission, according to their website, is as follows:
“Formed in 1922, WSSDA’s membership consists of the entirety of Washington’s 1,477 locally elected school board directors. As a state agency, per chapter 28A.345 RCW, WSSDA supports its members with research-based leadership development resources, policy and legal guidance, and legislative advocacy. This work is of critical importance because school board directors build the future of public education by setting the policy, governance, and budgetary priorities for all of Washington’s 295 school districts serving over 1.1 million students.”
School districts all over Washington state rely on this association for their advocacy work with the legislature, as well as for their advice on policy changes at the district level. While not binding, this advice is incredibly useful and important, and is often adopted wholesale by school boards. The attempted change to the bylaws of this organization would negatively impact thousands of students in WA state. (You can see one district’s proposed resolution in support of this change here. This resolution was voted down by the Monroe school board.) To that end, we wrote a letter to the Tahoma and Kent school boards and their superintendents, and are sharing it here. We believe this change needs to happen in the open, and be opposed by every WA state citizen who is interested in maintaining high quality, equitable, and progressive public education, with the needs of every student recognized and respected.
Open Letter to the Tahoma and Kent School Districts
It has come to our attention that an attempt is being made to change the WSSDA bylaws. WSSDA is heavily relied upon by our own district, as well as many others in WA state, for its legislative advocacy and for advice on school district policy changes. This work has a direct impact on students across the state.
The proposed change would remove weighted voting from the bylaws. This would mean that every district would receive only one vote, regardless of enrollment. The result of this would be that the needs of students in larger-than-average districts would lose weight in this body. Every student in our state deserves to be represented when it comes to conversations surrounding school policies and legislative priorities, which directly impact them.
This is an effort to silence the needs of thousands of WA state students. This is an attempt to gain greater political power by those advocating for this change. We implore our WSSDA representative to vote against this change to the WSSDA bylaws.
Thank you for your time,
Tahoma Values PAC
