Education on the Ballot: Part II
Superintendent Chris Reykdal defends his support for Jewish students.
Chris Reykdal has been superintendent of public instruction in Washington state for eight years. He is up for reelection this fall, but he’s been facing a rough road. Washington state students are slipping across the board, with dismal statistics like 70 percent of 10th graders testing below grade level in math. Covid can’t be blamed for all of it; the slippage was happening before the pandemic (though closing the schools for as long as we did here certainly did not help). The Seattle Times only reluctantly endorsed Reykdal after eliminating as a possibility GOP-backed David Olson, but initially endorsed failed candidate Reid Saaris, labeling Reykdal as a “cheerleader for mediocrity.”
Jewish families have other concerns. With anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism raging, sometimes coming from ill-informed, overworked, and/or activist teachers, parents are desperate for leadership and action. In such a state of threat, many surely feel that even mediocrity would be nice.
“We know we have a role in making sure districts understand the legal framework they have to operate under.”
The Cholent: I wanted to speak with both candidates for superintendent about the state of public education as it relates to the Jewish community, which is, as you know, facing a lot of difficulty. I wanted to start with your current race and if you were surprised about David Olson winning the primary and becoming your opponent.
Superintendent Chris Reykdal: I spend most of my time talking about where I'm going, not my opponent, but I will say we were not surprised. The state Republican party endorsed him, and all their other candidates dropped out of the primary. The whole GOP had one person, so it was a real high probability that if he could consolidate all the votes that he would get through.
In terms of your own policies against his, why do you think you're a better candidate?
Experience? First and foremost, this is an education executive job at the state level. So you're not running a school district. You're interacting with policy makers. I've been a legislator. He hasn't. You're interacting with labor. I've been a classroom teacher. He hasn't. You're interacting with higher education a lot in the transition of dual credit and kids from post-secondary, and I was an executive for 14 years in higher ed, and he hasn't had that. So it's mostly experience. And then obviously we have some personal views on diversity and equity issues and LGBTQ issues that are really emerging as big differences.
I know that you've been in conversation with many Jewish leaders, and what I'm hearing is that people are coming away feeling like the right words were said, but change isn't happening. I'm wondering how you feel about that. Does your office have the power to affect change for Jewish families experiencing anti-Semitism in the classrooms and in the schools and on campuses, and how do you plan to address their concerns?
Our job is to really enforce federal [and] state civil rights and laws. And so we don't have any more ability to affect for one student group than another necessarily. But it's our job to be a legal guidepost for districts, right? We don't teach students directly, we don't run local discipline policies. Those are all things at the local level. For example, we've got a second bulletin going out to school districts that identifies free speech rights and the limitations that they have. We have districts sometimes who say, teachers get to say whatever they want, free speech, and we say, no, that's not true, here's the actual law. We do start with the basis that we all have free speech rights unless we are in a restricted environment, and schools are a restricted environment. There's a captured audience there.
There are students who can't get away from it, for example, if somebody has a particular political opinion, which is why there are limitations on what teachers can do. When there are systemic issues and impacts to Jewish kids, which is happening today — I'm a former history teacher who spent a lot of time trying to contextualize for high school juniors the 21st-century realities of 20th-century persecution of Jews and well before that. I'm deeply concerned about this and our jobs to elevate the risk in the moment. Just like there was this massive anti-Muslim moment when Trump came in and he had his Muslim ban, there's always these moments where we have to lean into the civil rights laws that protect classes of students, and we have to lean into free speech to remind people that in school settings, it's not unlimited speech. That's our job. And right now it happens to be Jewish-identifying students who I think are really facing a lot of unprecedented pressure, but we would lean into this for any group of students.
What's become clear over the past year is that we're up against something that is a little bit bigger. I think what's going on against Jewish students is deeply systemic in a way that the average American just kind of can't really comprehend. I'm wondering if you're addressing this deep level of propaganda that's being put out there against the Jewish community globally.
I think we're aware of the conflict that's causing more of this information and sometimes misinformation to be out there. We do not control local curriculum or teacher lesson plans. Now, when we get complaints, when people reach out to us informally, we reach out to districts to say, how are you addressing this? I checked in with our civil rights office, which we've had to increase because of lots of other things going on as well, but they aren't seeing any uptick right now in formal complaints. I suspect it's because most families understand that they start at the school level. They really have to start at the school level and ultimately the district level. If there's something seriously egregious, especially if it involves a certificated teacher, then my office can investigate because we have the ability to revoke licenses if it's a really extreme situation. But when it's student behavior, student on student, the state agency is fairly involved with that because it's almost always addressed at the local level.
One of the big issues that we've been noticing are both walkouts and on-campus protests that don't appear to be run by school organizations. How does the state address that when talking to districts?
So we've sent them very clear guidance that this is one of those dicey areas where students may choose to walk out as a right, and it has consequences. It does not permit them to do it without it being a unexcused absence; for example, they cannot spontaneously use the facilities if there's district policy that requires, you know, advanced notice or even a lease agreement on facilities. So we've reminded districts that these things can come with real harm, particularly for captured audiences. Ten students might want to try to say something at lunchtime, but if they're doing it in the cafeteria, where there are Jewish students who feel that pressure and that anger, that's a captured audience. If it's a closed campus and they can't leave the environment, that is absolutely inappropriate. If [people are coming to school from] outside without permission, they need to be screened and checked. That's a trespass and there's a risk to other students. So we've put a framework in place, and I know it's early in the school year, but we're seeing a lot less of it this year than we saw last year following our guidance.
I want to ask about ethnic studies. This is an area where I think you don't have a ton of control, but this is a major concern for the Jewish community. The ethnic studies lobby has been pushing for a statewide graduation requirement. They've been pushing for a certification. The core values of liberated ethics studies are actually really problematic. They're under the guise of DEI, but they are quite rooted in some specific anti-Semitic theories. What are your thoughts on the growth of liberated ethnic studies?
I don't know what liberated ethnic studies is. Honestly, I don't follow this close enough. Partly because I'm in charge of learning standards, and it is the state board of ed that continues to entertain possible other graduation requirements. I respect they're doing their due diligence, but I don't attend those meetings regularly at all because I think there's other people thinking about these issues, and I've never felt that this issue or any other that my balance of time is appropriate there. I want to be super clear about that. A whole ’nother group's in charge of teacher preparation programs. That's the Professional Educator Standards Board. I'm being candid to tell you that the legislature assigns me to seven or eight boards and I have to make delegations to those. I really cannot sit in all of that meeting time and contemplation time. I have a real agency to run. So I'm not close to the issue. I do know that people want grad requirements, standalone, which I don't think are gonna happen. And I think they would also like more ethnic studies in general in coursework. I don't have an opinion on that yet, because I don't know how to differentiate that from inclusionary practices. Broadly speaking, how do we make the curriculum materials more inclusive for kids?
You recently came out in favor of restrictions on social media and cell phones. What led you to that?
Well, let's take two very distinct ideas that actually relate in the end. So first of all, we know there's such a distraction. Social media's a distraction during instructional time, during class time. We had the research on that for a while. We actually still don't have research on whether stopping it is improving grades or approving attendance. It's anecdotal. People tell us like, “wow, it feels better.” So we have enough anecdotal evidence from districts in our state and around the country to say, okay, we need to stop students from accessing social media when they're not permitted to during instructional time. So I'm not banning phones. I want to be clear before school, after school, lunchtime. Districts ultimately have this authority, not me or the legislature, but I wanted to put a framework out there that said, we have enough evidence now that this is a real distraction to behavior and a learning risk during instructional time. So that's that question. Lots of people are gonna do this. By next year, nearly all of our districts will update their cell phone policies.
That's only part of the equation though. What we're trying to do that's unique then around the country is I've already changed our learning standards. They'll be adopted in December in English language arts to start formally training kids at all grade levels, age appropriate on the impacts of information, misinformation, disinformation, and social media. So it's not about, “come to class and turn your phone off second period.” It's also when you're a public school student in Washington for the foreseeable future, you're gonna learn about the power of these tools and the real harms of these tools and how much misinformation there is. It's getting back to credible sources. You and I probably did card catalogs and things like that. It's inundating kids right now, and they don't have any formal learning on how to discern truth from fiction, propaganda from anything that's research based. And so we're going way beyond classroom use of phones and devices to changing learning standards. And that's what's unique about Washington state.
Something everybody's concerned about is special education funding. Why is there not enough money in special education already, and what is causing that?
It's always been important. When I got here, I saw a massive under-spend. And what I mean by that is the state wasn't putting in enough of its share and local districts being asked to use local levies. So when I started, the legislature was only putting in $1.1 billion a year into special ed. And today it's $2.2 billion per year. But we still have districts spending upwards of $700 million out of local levy funds to support students with disabilities. And that's wrong, because you can't make a basic education subject to whether or not the voters pass a levy every three years or not. So we've made a huge amount of progress. My budget request we just put out yesterday asked the legislature to close that gap to take two years: $300 million in the first year up to $700 million in the second year, and finally get districts out from under using any levy for special ed services. We don't necessarily have more [special education] kids. It's inched up a little, but nationally we're kind of right in there at, you know, 14, 15 percent of kids. The cost of accommodations as we've gotten more sophisticated around knowing how to improve outcomes, those have certainly gone up. But it's mostly just getting the transfer of local obligation to the state is the reason the state budget request looks so large. It would have a corresponding savings for local districts.
Thank you. Anything else you’d like to share?
Well, I want to be unequivocal in that the anti-Semitism is absolutely on the rise and getting to a dangerous place in this country. We've had these moments in our history. It's really peaking right now. I want to lean into that both nationally and in our state and be super clear that we know we have a role in making sure districts understand the legal framework they have to operate under. I just think it's hard, because sometimes we get calls, whether it's this issue or another, “why doesn't OSPI just swoop in there and fix it for a local district?” And that's not how we're funded. It's not how we're designed. The laws don't put that really in our place, unless there's something really egregious from a certificated teacher or a systemic pattern that we find in one of our audits, and we will look for sure, that's why we have civil rights teams. But the day-to-day harm that can happen to a child or a Jewish member even on the staff, that is almost always going to need to be addressed at the local level. And only if they don't get redressed there, they can make a formal civil rights complaint with my office. And that's when we then take off and start the investigation work.
Photo: Chris Reykdal with his wife, Kim/Instagram @chris4wakids
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Sorry this is long. Everyone really needs to watch / listen to the WA State Board of Education meeting from September 5 on TVW. The Ethnic Studies discussion starts at 1:36 on the recording.
The board members were very sincere about wanting to promote diverse contributions and histories, such as Native American history. (However, my understanding is that Native American Studies pulled out of ethnic studies years ago and developed its own curriculum. The Native Americans present didn't discuss that.)
But what they were talking about is really called multiculturalism. And that is exactly what WAESN explicitly rejected at its conference a few years ago.
They lauded how diverse their board is, but there was not a single member of the mainstream Jewish community there, and they seemed to completely oblivious and unaware of our experiences and of the antisemitism that has transpired for years in the way ethnic studies is being developed here.
They wanted to remove overly academic terminology, but the main point is that the academic approach matters.
The board wants all ethnicities to appreciate each other and better understand each other, and in ignoring discussions of the academic terminology, they are not understanding that what we are getting is the *opposite* of what they are claiming to support.
I did not hear any ideological positions from the Board of Education members. They are just very clueless about the difference of what their goal is and what is actually going on.
They had no clue about the difference between ethnic studies and liberated ethnic studies vs. multiculturalism.
At the next meeting, October 16-17, in Nia Bay, they are going to approve a recommendation to the legislature and this could include making it a graduation requirement.
We have two weeks or less to get our comments in and to communicate with the Board of Education. And we have our own holidays taking place during that time.
Our Jewish organization leaders have again failed us, because not one person mentioned or expressed any knowledge of Jewish concerns about the curriculum providers. They don't seem to have had any deep in-person conversations with Jewish leaders.
It's up to us, the grass roots, to have *respectful* and kind conversations educating them within two weeks and asking how they are going to listen to and accommodate us.
I encourage everybody to apply for boards and commissions and, if you are qualified and can fund and run a campaign, to run for school board. The first thing you learn on the government side is that authority is very limited to the topics allowed under the law and under the rules. On any committee or any group, you have one vote, and whatever subset of the group has the most votes for something is controlling what the group decides. You have to find ways to make progress within those limitations. In some situations, it's not possible to make any progress, and that's when it's reasonable to resign or not to run for re-election or apply to be re-appointed.