Conservatives tighten grip on Kennewick School Board. Their stand on flags, book bans

The school board in Kennewick will see a conservative swing in its makeup this fall.

Three of the Kennewick School Board’s five seats are up for reelection on the Nov. 7 general election ballot. Ron Mabry and Diane Sundvik, two moderate voices on the board, have chosen to not seek reelection.

Local Republicans hope to instill a conservative majority on the school board after three successful recall measures ousted their majority on the school board in Richland.

“This election is going to impact the next four years of the Kennewick School District,” said Dustin Petersen, a father of three who is running to the right of board president Michael Connors.

The Benton County Republican Central Committee endorsed Petersen, Brittany Gledhill and Joshua Miller earlier this year for seats on the Kennewick board.

Miller is likely to win election to the board’s Director No. 5 seat, despite having an opponent on the ballot. His challenger, Lisa Peppard, announced she was ending her candidacy after a death in the family, but that was after the deadline to withdraw from the race.

If Peppard ends up with a majority of the votes and is elected but refuses to take the oath of office, then that seat would be deemed vacant. The four remaining members of the Kennewick School Board will fill the vacancy until the next election.

This slate of Republican candidates says they’re not interested in shaking things up, only improving student achievement and academics and restoring community trust after two failed levies in Kennewick.

School board seats have traditionally not attracted much attention from prospective candidates. Meetings are often long and the positions are unpaid.

But in recent years, despite being nonpartisan positions, school boards have become a lightning rod for “culture war” issues and ideological battles. The COVID pandemic heightened this, with parents and community members coming out to debate mask and vaccine mandates and the obscure concept of “critical race theory” or CRT.

Kennewick hasn’t sat mum to these issues, either.

In February, the school board shot down a controversial policy amendment that would have placed limits on how teachers could display non-U.S. flags — such as rainbow gay pride flags — in classrooms.

And last year, the board adopted a policy amendment that students must be taught “factual U.S. history” and cannot be “indoctrinated into the belief that the U.S. is fundamentally or systemically racist.”

That measure was originally introduced by two school board members to crack down on what they saw as CRT instruction in classes, but district administrators have repeatedly emphasized that schools don’t teach CRT.

The Kennewick School District is the largest in the Tri-Cities, with more than 19,000 enrolled students and more than 2,000 employees. The school board oversees a spending budget of more than $300 million.

None of the candidates running have been endorsed by the local teachers union.

Kennewick Director No. 3

Dustin Petersen is challenging incumbent Mike Connors for the No. 3 seat currently held by Ron Mabry, a radiological engineer and facility manager at PNNL.

Connors has served one term on the board but switched to run for Mabry’s seat because only one other candidate had filed that position.

He wants to give the board some stability and institutional knowledge.

“I have learned an enormous amount in the last four years, and even after four years I’m still learning,” said Connors, 55, who has two high school-age children in Kennewick schools. “If I’m elected, I’ll be the only one with more than two years of experience.”

Connors is owner of Skone and Connors Produce in Pasco. He’s a third generation farmer whose family has worked in the Tri-Cities since the 1940s. His wife, April Connors, serves as a Republican representative in the Washington Legislature.

School safety, addressing learning loss and declining enrollment, and lobbying the state for more basic education and special education funding are among Connors’ top priorities for a second term.

Connors backed levy funding to hire safety officers in elementary schools and expand school resource officer programs in middle schools this school year.

Testing shows Kennewick students are about halfway recovered from COVID-era learning losses. Connors said the board needs to continue supporting the efforts of schools to catch students back up.

Petersen grew up on an apple farm in the Quincy area. He’s lived in the Tri-Cities since 2017 and has two young children in Kennewick schools.

“I’m concerned about the future of my kids’ education and the direction we’re headed. The next board’s going to have some challenges with a pretty large budget deficit coming up,” said Petersen, 36.

Petersen works as a food safety officer at Ecolab. He previously served for a few years on the Quincy City Council before moving away to Arizona then returning to Washington state.

Asked to grade the Kennewick board’s leadership in recent years, Petersen gave them a C.

“I don’t think under Mike Connors’s leadership the district has gotten better. In fact, I think it’s gotten worse,” he said, adding that he would “like to see more civility and some more levelheadedness out of our board president.”

He sees the back-to-back levy failures as a “vote of no confidence” by the community, and says the public has not been satisfied with the district’s leadership in recent years.

Voters approved the levy on the third try in April but the delay will mean the district won’t receive local tax revenue this year. The district has said it has a plan to use reserves and COVID relief money to make up some of the difference.

Petersen believes the district’s financial outlook is not getting enough attention, either. If the district finds itself in a situation where cuts need to be made, he says he’s the better candidate to make those tough decisions.

“We’re going to need some new eyes there to help right the ship,” he said.

Petersen also pointed to a recent fine by the Washington Public Disclosure Commission around levy promotion as damaging the public’s trust.

By law, public school districts are not allowed to weigh in or promote local operation levies and bond measures that they put out to the voters. But the PDC found the school district went to far in attempting to influence the April special election.

Petersen said he would support a flag policy that puts the American flag as the highest and most prominent in the classroom out of a sign of respect for the country, but believes teachers should be allowed to display gay pride flags too.

Connors said banning or restricting flags — including those associated with alma maters and sports teams — only serves to sterilize learning environments.

He said the school board received dozens of pictures of the “same three gay pride flags” that were hung up in Kennewick schools last year during a debate about restricting certain flags in classrooms.

“At the end of that day, nothing in that policy, to me, made our educational system better,” Connors said.

“It’s terrifying. I have a gay child, and how am I going to explain to my child that I’m OK with them banning what this community believes is a flag of acceptance and love?” he added.

Petersen also has been critical of Connors’ vote to allow the children’s book, “Antiracist Baby,” by Ibram X. Kendi to remain on shelves at elementary schools.

The book — which, according to a description, “introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism” — has been the target of several book bans in the nation, with critics saying the concepts can confuse and divide children.

“Let’s keep politics out of the schools,” Petersen said, adding they should consider taking out books they find “inappropriate.”

Connors — who voted alongside Mabry, who is Black, and Sundvik to keep the book — says he’s against removing books that reflect different ideologies and perspectives.

“Just because we disagree with something, doesn’t mean we should ban access to it — especially a children’s book that was not full of profanity, vulgarity,” Connors said. “It wasn’t a great book, but people got mad and thought we should ban that. That is both morally and ethically wrong — we cannot ban different ideas.”

Kennewick Director No. 4

Brittany Gledhill and Aaron Michele Massey will face off for the seat currently held by Connors.

Gledhill is a full-time, stay-at-home mom with five kids in Kennewick schools. Her family owns Gledhill Dental in Kennewick.

“The reason I’m running is because I have always believed we need to be involved in our community,” said Gledhill, 43.

Top priorities for her include improving student test scores, advocating for transparency for parents to know what their children are doing in school, local control, and providing beneficial oversight over the district’s budget.

She will have children in the school district for the next decade and believes a parent’s perspective is needed.

Gledhill voted down the levy last year, but has voted for local school funding the last two times. She and other parents felt they weren’t being heard over lingering COVID mandates, and they felt their trust had been broken.

“I am the demographic of parent in the Kennewick School District that takes kids out to homeschool and takes kids out to private school. We have not recovered all of that enrollment yet, and I understand how to talk to that population,” Gledhill said.

“I see myself as a liaison between the school district and the parents,” she added.

In addition to the Benton County Republican Party, Gledhill is also endorsed by the Mainstream Republicans of Washington.

Massey is a parent of two boys who are on individualized education programs. She’s running because she believes there’s “more the district could do as far as special education.”

“The programs are there, but they’re not being utilized at their full capacity in ways that they can be, and I do believe there are tweaks that can be made to make them better,” she told the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties.

Massey was not available to speak to the Tri-City Herald about her candidacy, but has spoken publicly at forums and provided a statement in the Voters Pamphlet.

Raised in Tennessee and having spent time married to a military service member and as a union member in the nuclear industry, Massey relocated to the Tri-Cities five years ago to be closer to family. She currently works as an independent process server.

“I really want to give back to my community,” she said in the Voters Pamphlet. “I want what is best not only for my students, but for all students. I also feel that parents, children with disabilities and minorities need a greater voice in our community. My overall goal is to listen and to be that voice for everyone.”

On the issue of removing books from libraries, Gledhill’s and Massey’s views vary slightly.

Gledhill says there’s a specific process for curating and challenging books in public school libraries.

She believes librarians should remain independent to decide which books are allowed. But if a book does not meet community standards, it’s OK to exclude them from the collection.

“I think excluding authors and things of that nature is something that shouldn’t be done, because we’re going to get to the point where we’re excluding history and excluding history causes us to repeat past mistakes,” Massey said.

Kennewick Director No. 5

Josh Miller is unopposed after his challenger Lisa Peppard announced she is no longer seeking the position.

The seat is currently held by Diane Sundvik, who is not seeking a second term.

Miller, 45, works as an orthopedic surgeon for Kadlec Regional Medical Center and clinical faculty member at WSU’s School of Medicine. The son of a public school teacher has four children attending Kennewick schools.

His priorities are to focus on academic excellence, encourage parent involvement, and to focus on fiscal responsibility and transparency. He would also like to see more curricula and instructional feedback from parents and students.

The district also needs to be more willing to accept cost-cutting measures, in areas such as construction, Miller said, to put more dollars into education.

“Listening to the people that are in the trenches is imperative. So, listening to teachers, listening to what their experiencing is important,” he said.

Miller said believes having other flags in classrooms “divide us” and siphon people into groups.

“Unfortunately, I don’t believe that’s what our schools should be doing. The beauty of our school is our schools can be a safe place for all of our kids if we focus on academics,” he said at a forum for conservative candidates.

“I would need a good reason for another flag to be there... I don’t think it’s appropriate for a teacher to be pushing a certain political ideology or a certain social ideology on the students. They have incredible influence on the students,” he added.