It is a deligh to be here with you again today.

And I just want to remind you that democracy starts when we make the time and effort to know the candidates who wish to represent us in elected roles.

So thank you for being here today.

And thank you to AWB for lining up a full day of opportunity for us to meet the candidates.

I would like to invite the candidates to the stage at this time and while they're coming, I will share with you that the candidates have bee briefed on today's ground rules.

They have both agreed to those ground rules.

And at some point during today's conversation, each candidate will have an opportunity to question each other.

And at the end of our debate, each will have an opportunity to wrap up their comments.

We have tossed a coi to determine who will go first.

I was there, it was very fair and going first.

Today we will have candidate Dave Olson, who has served as of a Peninsula School board member since 2013.

He is a retired naval officer, navy diver and electrician.

He served on the Pierc County Charter Review Commission in 2016, and has worke in the banking industry as well.

And then we also have with u Chris Reydahl, presently serving as our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, elected to this position in 2016 and again in 2020.

Chris also served three term in the House of Representatives and one term on the Tumwater School Board, and Chris is also a former high school history teacher and according to the coin toss, David, we will allow you to provide your opening statement.

We're ready.

Right?

Yes.

So good morning.

My name is David Olson, and I'm running for superintendent of public Instruction.

I want to first start by thanking the Association of Washington Business Integrators, Spokane Incorporated, for hosting today's debate.

As she said, I'm a retired U.S. Navy officer.

I spent 28 years in the Navy.

I started as an electrician, went to hard hat diving and underwater welder.

I went in as enlisted, go out of a chief warrant officer.

So I learned the hard way.

Going to chief warrant officer.

I've served on my school board for 11 years.

We've done some really great things in my school district.

I've served during the pandemic and also during the McClear decision that impacted our state in certain ways.

However, under my I think during that time we've done so many good things, and I think that our experience makes me a good candidate and the right candidate for this office.

However, my own or my opponent's leadership, our students in the state are suffering.

Less than 50% of the kids can read and write at grade level.

Our achievement gap is widening and absentee rates have doubled, all while state spending has increased for education.

I look forward to talking to you more about today, and about what I can do to improve those.

Thanks, David.

And Chris, your opening statement.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Chris Reydahl our superintendent, public schools for the state of Washington.

Thank you.

To AWB to TVW who always does an amazing job.

And to Microsoft.

It's been great to be a partner with a lot of these folks for many, many years.

I am the son of two people wh only got through middle school.

They didn't go to high school.

I found my passion and my love in public school.

Teachers who believed in me, educators who knew I could do more and I could escape the cycle of poverty was public education.

And that's the opportunity for over a million kids today.

It's why I serve.

I became a teacher first to my family to go straight to college.

Go, Cougs.

What an Apple Cup!

I am really proud of the work that we have done.

Just real fast.

Best kindergarten readiness scores we have seen since we've been keeping track of this.

We've got test scores and recovery.

It's actually 70% of our students who are at grade level, 50% by 10th grader already taking a college level coursework.

Third of our middle schoolers taking high school math.

Two thirds of our graduate already with college transcripts record high grad rates, even with more math, science, English language arts being taken.

I look forward to today.

Thanks, Chris and David.

So let's get to some tough questions.

And the first one's a doozy.

Washington has a very complicated funding strategy for K-12 education.

If you could wave a magic wan to help the legislature untangle it, what would you do?

I would challenge th legislature to establish a goal of making us at least averag in the United States in funding.

That's not on a per student basis because of our high cost of living here, but on a share of our economy.

We're a very successful economy because of education, early learning, K-12, higher ed, and our capital inflows.

This is one of the most successful states in the United States of America.

We did it on the backs of public education.

The rest of the country puts 3.6% of the economy back into their public schools.

We only put 3.1% back in.

We got really close in 2018 to closing that gap before the pandemic.

But then we were asked to do was to rely on One-Time Federal Money instead of ongoing state investment.

And now we're slipping again.

That half a percent difference is $4 billion per fiscal year.

That's the kind of funding level that Massachusetts has.

They spend $4,000 more per student.

You times that by our million kids.

We're talking about $4 billion.

I would ask our legislature, as I just did with our budget request this week, to get us to at least the national average focus on the places with the largest gaps, where districts are subsidizing state investment with local levies that special education to the tune of 700 million.

That's transportation.

That's inflation.

On basic costs, we call them maintenance supplies and operating costs.

It's paying our lowest paid employees and our school districts a living wag to slow down the turnover there.

And it's a massive investment.

Student mental health.

We're in high performing state.

Only two states in the nation outperformance and reading on the common assessment we use.

And only seven states in th country outperformance in math.

If we want to be the best we have to invest like the best.

Thank you and David.

But with the answer the same.

Yes.

Would you like me to repeat it, please?

It's a little echoey.

I couldn't hear.

Okay, so we're talking abou Washington State's complicated, budget structure.

And if you could wave a magic wand to help the legislature untangle it, what would you advise?

Well, I think, state funding is definitely one of the most important things we need to do.

Especially special ed.

When I travel the state, talk to teachers.

They're saying our number on priority is student discipline.

And then they need peer educators support in the classrooms.

Our teachers are absolutely overwhelmed.

Under the leadership of my opponent, over the last eight years, we've actually been spending more and education less per capita than we should be, or we are spending more.

But academic outcomes are not showing the outcome of spending more money.

special education funding absolutely needs to be fully funded by the state legislature.

Transport station is broken.

The way they fund transportation is hurting our districts across the state.

To be able to hire qualified bus drivers and pay them a good wage, also to fund for the gas and for maintenance.

When I talk to superintendents around the state, they say that the number two top two things that are hurting them are transportation, funding and special ed.

If the state will just do its constitutional dut and fully fund those two things, special ed and transportation, they told me tha it would really help them a lot.

And getting out of the hole that we're in right now financially.

Thank you.

Chris, would you like to respond?

Yeah, I'd like to question, you know, David and I have agreed on a lot of these key investments.

I think some of the difference is the courage to step forward and be honest about the fact that we don't just live in money.

We do have to make hard choices with the budget we have, or we have to fix the tax code that, quite frankly, oppresses small business.

It's a gross tax system.

There's been little tweaks to it, but if you don't make profit, it's oppressive.

If you're low income and you're basically putting your entire tax burden in sales tax, you're paying 3 or 4 times the rate of the very wealthy in our state.

I support the capital gains tax, may not be popular in this room, may not be popular in other parts of the state.

I believe we should keep it.

It's funding $800 million in early learning in K-12.

My opponent opposes that.

So it's the same old sort of trickle down.

I'm spend more but tax less.

Thank you.

Broken budget system.

Thank you David.

The next question is for you.

First, speaking of complicated, in January of 2007, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of two familie against the state of Washington.

That lawsuit came to be known as McCleary, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and after a number of years, the legislature came to some agreement on how to address the state's investments in K-12 education to try and make them more equitable.

Since then, the funding disparities between schoo districts is not getting better.

What is your solution?

I think the, state legislature, in my opinion, should be held in contempt again for not fully funding education the way they were before the McCleary decision.

the McCleary decision resulted in a two year stopgap budget that infused a little bit more money into the state.

Unfortunately, school districts jumped on that money and in a year or two later none of that money had actually made it into the classroom.

I think that what we have to do i we have to revisit how the state education is funded.

The current prototypical funding model is absolutely not working.

When I talk to superintendents around the state, they told me that during the McCleary decision, there was four individuals from the four pillars that met in secret that come up with that bill, that state superintendent, school boards, teachers were not consulted or called.

They did not get to collaborate on the outcome of the McCleary decision.

We need to go back to the table, revisit how we fund student, school funding.

We need to do it weighted so that our rural school districts and high poverty scholarships get a better funding.

What they're currently getting right now, in the current political model world, scholarships and high poverty school districts are not getting equal share of our state budget, and it's determined by the zip code.

We need to fix that.

It's inequitable in the state, needs to meet its constitutional duty and go back to the drawing board on how we fund education.

Thank you.

Thank you.

David.

Chris, should the legislature open up McCleary.

Well I think they're going to have to at least meet the constitutional obligation.

I think they got awfully close to state.

Supreme court said you're off the hook.

This was 5 or 6 years ago.

The second that happened, I think other priorities began to dominate the legislature.

Understandably, we all want address homelessness issues.

We all want to address the opioid issues.

We've got enormous risk to vulnerable families.

It's not that these aren't high priorities.

It's that they're using the same broken tax code to try to do too many things.

So if we're not going to fix the revenue code and make it more equitable, then we are going to have to prioritize.

I put forward a budget.

It sounds like David and I agree on this.

I'll take a full endorsement on my website if you want of our budget, you got to fill up the hole first because we saw this 7 or 8 years ago when people said we need to work on the funding formula, and what they did is they use it as an excuse to not fund anything and really put our districts in jeopardy.

So let's not continue to harm school districts and students and communities by trying to reinvent something which we should examine.

We should figure out more weighted models.

Today, $1 billion of our 17 billion per year is focused on high poverty students on meals.

Since I've been superintendent, we've more than doubled the number of kids who have access to breakfast and lunch.

We are a progressive state.

A bit in spending, we can do a lot more.

This is something we agree on, but don't fail to invest today because you want to perfect the thing later.

That would be the worst case scenario.

Thank you.

And we do like to respond.

David, I would just I agre that we do agree on the funding, but I would like to say see my opponent be a stronger advocate over the last few years to get the state to meet that obligation.

I do not believe that he has done enough.

He's been more reactive than proactive, in my opinion, to get the spendin under control as far as how much we give our schools across the state, I guess, superintendent I will be much stronger advocate and be more proactive to lobby our state legislature to fund our schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

David.

Chris, we keep reading about school district financial shortfalls and painful conversations about school closures.

And the state recently place the Marysville School District.

You know this better than anybody under, enhanced financial monitoring.

How can we make sure this isn't going to start happening in other districts?

And how can we avoid this in the future?

Well, our school districts are local government entities.

They have the constitutional and statutory responsibility to balance their budgets.

There's 295 of them.

Plus we've got charter schools, plus we have 6 or 7 tribal compact schools.

Those locally elected board members are local governments just like your city or your county.

The role of OSP is to do the monitoring work s we put these districts on alert.

More than two years ago most of the districts who are in jeopardy have done a great job with locally elected boards managing the cuts that they need to.

While we advocate for the resources, we would not be in this position of special education was fully funded transportation was fully funded.

But what also came along was a scenario where we were asked to rely on one time funds.

Our districts did a fantastic job not relying on those permanently.

They knew not to.

Those dollars have gone away.

We are the number one state in the country, and the efficienc of those federal esser dollars.

Number one in the nation, every dollar spent on the allowable uses.

And then you combine that with the perfect storm of both declining birth rates and the fact that some families chose home school in grades K-3.

And you have a recipe for districts who needed to get on their reductions very, very quickly while we work on funding solutions.

As superintendent, I've been a part of increasing funding by $5 billion in this state that barely got us to the 3.1% of GDP that I talked about earlier.

So it's a combination of investment, the alert system that we put in place, we only have five districts out of 295.

They're in binding conditions.

But we've got to shore up their investments and challenge them to keep being efficient.

When they have enrollment declines, because our declining birth rate will continue to put pressure on districts for years, and the legislature needs to help them with that.

Thank you, Chris and David as an elected school, thank you.

It's very unfortunate that across the state we're seeing so many school districts struggle.

Like Marysville, Seattle Public Schools are looking to close 20 schools.

Marysville is currently combining positions.

During that period of time, I did not face any financial situations.

We manage our money well.

I do not think most pie in the current leadership is proactive enough in helping schools navigate their financial crisis that they're going through.

He mentioned Esser, however, and in 2022, the Department of Education had an investigative IG that came out and found OSP was negligent and mismanaged almost $2 million.

And that's her funds.

The 2022 Supplemental Fund, or the Esser fund preliminary finding, said that almost $1.85 billion was not properly allocated across the state to schools.

I think they got that as money on time inefficiently and then been told how to effectively spend it.

Some of these school districts are not find themselves in such a dire situation today that Covid money, that extra money that was not allocated, was meant for student needs, health and safety, operational continuity, and also for, overhead and keep schools open.

So I think they should have done a better job in handling this money.

Thank you.

Thank you.

David, would you like to respond?

Chris.

Yeah, there's no such audi that claims that on our website, if you go to Chris Rake dawg, there's a shameless plug and go check it out.

We've got two facts versus myth page.

There are U.S. government audited, two states randomly, Washington and Kentucky.

Kentucky had some pretty egregious spending.

It sounds like in Washington, they're only finding was during the middle of the crisis.

We didn't make school districts post their budgets to their websites fast enough.

That was the claim.

You didn't make a poster.

Budgets fastness, or the public could see how they'd spend their emergency money.

We immediately got on top of it a couple of charter schools were the last ones to finish the work, but we got them there.

In fact, they recognized that we were on it immediately.

Thank you and efficient with the money.

Thank you.

Okay, let's stop talking about money and talk about something a little more fun.

Technology.

and we are starting with Chris this time.

What role should artificial intelligence I play in today's classroom?

It's going to play a very big role.

I was the third superintendent, the United States, to issue comprehensive guidance.

We've had two phases of that guidance ever since then.

Technology's always been a part of a dynamic school system.

It always has been.

The reason your kids and grandkids aren't learning on the abacus is because the calculator came along and people said, oh my God, the calculator is going to create mass cheating.

We should never allow it.

It was banned for years in schools.

And then we went really, this is part of learning.

This is part of students engaging in a comprehensive economy that' both in the state of Washington, regionally, nationally and globally.

And artificial intelligence has the incredible power of productivity.

And it's the creation of knowledge.

It's not a website that you go find something, it's something that you're allowed to create with.

So we put guidance to our educators to shape the classroom.

They're going to have to teach differently.

They're going to have to grade and assess differently.

Because the five page paper that took you and I weeks to write, pouring through card catalogs and libraries, it literally gets done in five seconds.

So it's not about producing the document anymore.

Kids are not factory widgets.

It's about producing the document with A and then critically using canvas time to think through it and to redesign it and to shape it and to ask alternative questions.

We're embracing AI in the state, along with student data privacy and all the framework that guidance has gone to our districts.

We have October meetings of regional teams all across the state.

We are leading the nation already in AI and our schools with caution on the privacy, but a full embrace of how it's going to transform business in the state of Washington.

And if we want our businesses to be successful, all of our graduates are going to have to know how to use these tools as part of a learning strategy, not a one off.

Thank you.

And, David, what rol should I play in the classroom?

I think everybody knows, hey, I isn't going away.

So you eithe embrace it or you just reject it and then you're going to fall behind.

Our school district is a national leader in AI.

Our CTO flies around the nation, talking about our school district because we're so far ahead of the curve on AI.

One of the things we're doing is are training our teachers how to use it effectively, and we're working with our students to make sur that they're using it ethically so that they don't use it to cheat.

They use it as a supplement to their education.

I just got to see so far ahead in AI right now that we are going to be presenting at the annual what's the conference in a couple months?

Because we are a leader in this subject.

I'm really proud of the work that my school district has done, and I believe that scores across the state need to have more support from Ospi to help them fund some of these, new AI initiatives.

Not every school can afford to bring in the technology like mine can.

So we need to make sure that they get the supplemental funds from the state to help those, especially the rural scholarships and high poverty school districts.

We need to make sure that it's equitable across the state because all the kids are super smart.

They just don't all have access to the technology, like some highe net worth school districts have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chris, would you like to respond?

And if not, I've got kind of a quick follow up.

go ahead.

You follow up.

Okay.

So what I will say is we're also doing something unlike any other state.

we've got lots of districts, including David's, that has taken on cell phones in the classroom.

It's a different issue.

It's a behavioral question.

Will kids focus in the classroom and social medi and phones can be a distraction.

So statewide we're approaching that now.

But that's not enough.

If students then go home and spend six hours on screen and not know the impact on them, it's not enough.

So we're introducing AI as a learning tool or regulating the devices in classrooms, but we are also changing ou learning standards to teach kids about the power and the risk of more social media in a comprehensive and media literacy way.

We are the only state doing that aggressively at this point.

That was my follow up.

Thank you.

David, talk a little bit about your strategy for cell phones in the classroom.

A given that we are using technology more and more, how will you manage that?

Yeah, one of the things that we've seen nationally, and if you've read the book, the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, you can see the amount of mental health damage that cell phones and social media cause in our youth, especially young girls in middle school, they're getting body shamed.

Social media bullying, young boys are on porn.

all the kind of things that you would not want their kids to be.

This student discipline is the number one issue in this state for the teachers that I'm talking to.

And a lot of it has to do with cell phones.

So we realize this in my scholarship about two years ago, we started having a conversation around it.

So last year our school district was one of the first in the state, the largest in the state, to restrict cell phones in the classroom and to ban social media at the router so our kids can have them on, on mute because parents wanted to be able to know where their kids were, but they did not have access to social media, even on their student issue digital devices.

And my school is one of the leaders in the state on this.

We saw improved academic scores, our mental health improved dramatically per parents.

Student discipline issues are down, and it's sort of funny that over the last six months, I've been on the campaign trail bragging about how good our school district is doing on this, and two weeks ago, my opponent just came out with guidance on cell phone policy for the state.

So I'm a proactive candidate, proactive leader.

And I said before, I believe my my opponent is more of a reactionary, and I believ it was more of a political stunt than a real desire to, improve social media use in schools.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And, Chris, would you like to expound on your cell phone policy?

Yeah, yeah.

When you're the superintendent of the state of Washington, you have a responsibility to your districts and you've got a lot of legal risk when you go out and get a little aggressive.

I think that's another ringing endorsement of local control.

David talks a lot about how OSP doesn't allow enough local control, but his district was able to manage all of his Esser money.

He was able to put in a cell phone policy.

This is the delicate balance of state expectations and state learning standards which we control it OSP versus the allocation of fund which the legislature controls.

And then it's local board that make these hard decisions.

So again, I want to shape the comprehensive nature of this.

You are living in a state right now that has issued advanced guidance on addressing behavior in classrooms.

We've we've given a framework for school districts to address now cell phone policy.

Many of them are already ou ahead of us given local control.

And that's great.

We're learning from them.

But we're also the only state that has put forward a comprehensive media literacy strategy.

It's not enough to regulate phones in classrooms.

If kids go home and use the stuff for six hours a day, get to bed at 2:00 in the morning, don't get nutrition and sleep, and then come to school struggling.

There's got to be a comprehensive educational effort around that.

That's what we're doing.

And on top of that, we're educating our educators to say AI is a tool that is going to help you develop a more tailored learning for individual kids.

We put out comprehensive guidance when the research is there, and I'm very, very proud of the educators in the state of Washington.

Thank you.

And David, would you like to respond?

Yeah, I just think it, you know, as a leader in this state, I do support local control, and some school districts might want to have a more rigid standard than what we did in some.

One might want to have a little bit more of a lax standard.

But I just think that we need to get ahead of this.

We need to.

It is causing damage to our students.

Nothing that the student has on their cell phone in school is not found on their digital or vice.

So I think having that cell phone out, we collaborate with parents, students and teachers to get a successful policy in place, and I think that I can scale that up statewide if I'm elected.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we can't really talk about screen time without talking about mental health.

And it's already come up here today.

Chris, we'll start with you.

What level of mental health services do you believe should be offered by our state's public schools?

And how do you propose to pay for those?

So we've been doing this work for a long time.

Any of you, when you went to school, you knew you might have had a school psych or a counselor.

And most of the time that's a referral system.

They are not highly trained especially our school counselors in high acuity mental health risk.

But we've increasingly invested in this.

I advance the budget request to the legislature, which they graciously funded for $300 million in additional staff positions around this.

So we are adding staffing to our schools.

The third year that investment kicks in the school year.

More Scott Sykes, more of mental health suppor specialists and referral system.

So it's not enough to just put more resources in classrooms, especially if you're in rural Washington, you may not be able to get that school psych.

So we've also buil regional mental health networks.

I made the executive decision with some of that federal dollars to build these networks.

We've asked the legislature to backfill that.

They've actually about a quarter of it.

My budget request will ask them to backfill the whole thing.

In some rural communities, it' about sending an expert to them so that they can work with students, or even some tell them mental health supports, because we don't have those professionals necessarily in every community.

So we pay for it with basic ed dollars.

We challenge the legislature and make a priority out of it.

All of these things are hooked together.

Direct supports for kids regional mental health systems.

We have threat assessment for high risk kids, for sure.

We have seen mental health improve over the last four years.

We survey students.

They tell us this every two years and the suicide rate one is too many.

I want to be super clear, but the suicide rate in the state of Washington has decline since I've been superintendent.

It's down 25% from when I started.

We are getting to our kids, but I don't want to just react to it.

I want to get on the front end of it.

That's the learning guidance and the learning standards around social.

Thank you.

David.

What should the schools be providing in regard to mental health an how are we going to pay for it?

Well, according to the Mental Health Institute, Washington State students ranked number 49th in the nation.

as far as student suicide ideology, you want to be number one.

We're almost at the very bottom about the number of students in our schools that are considering suicide.

That's absolutely horrible.

The state funding model tha we currently have for my school district of 9000 students only funds point eight FTE.

That's less than one for psych in my entire school district, and we hired 13.

So the state does not fund enough money for our schools to really hard sites for the right.

So we are 1 and we pay them out of our levy.

Levy money is not meant to hire psychologists.

Our teachers are not trained psychologists.

They need those extra supports in the class so that we can do early intervention, early, early identification of students that might be struggling.

The cell phone policy in our school district has definitely help improve student mental health, but I do not believe schools are, in place.

They are there to educate our kids.

We also have a group in our school district called crossroads.

They help students that are struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, but that's a third party vendor that we have to pull in to do that.

And so I'd like to see the state political funding fully fund psychologists for the schools, so we don't have to use levy dol And would you like to respond?

Yeah, David didn't exactly answer the question and how to pay for it.

And this is where we always have these conflicts.

I'm standing in front of a group of business leaders, and it's hard to tell you this, but I said it before and I'll say it again, you actually have to change the tax code.

Otherwise we're going to chase our tail.

Putting another 40 or $50 million into student mental health will come out of something else that's essential for kids.

So again, he doesn't support the capital gains tax.

He doesn't support Progressive Revenue.

Since we have enough money.

That's the old trickle down logic that's hurt our state.

We should not overtax, but we can lean into this question of helping our regressive tax code.

And we're not 49th in student mental health.

We actually collect data unlike some states.

So we have a high rate of identification.

And we're 10th in the nation and the actual resources available to kids.

I want to be number one.

You need revenue to do it.

I support new revenue.

Thank you Chris.

And we have come to that magical moment in today's conversation where you get to ask each other questions.

And, David, we're going to start with you.

What do you want to ask Chris?

Oh, okay.

So Chris, on August 16th, 2024, a couple weeks ago, your office issued a bulletin 5524 addressing a surge in anti-socia and disruptive student behavior, something our educators have been raising concerns about since before Covid.

It mentions emergency rules for student discipline and refers to best practices.

Can you explain what these best practices are and how they actually work to improve student behavior and improve student learning?

Yeah, a law was thinking there was a law passed, about 7 or 8 years ago that was attempting to address student discipline and behavior in the state of Washington.

I think it's a decent law.

I think our organization was well under way in rulemaking when I got there.

And I take total, responsibility for not being aggressive about the review of those rules.

When they went into place, they created a massive bureaucracy.

When you and I were in school and we talked too much, a teacher said to us, hey, pipe down.

And if we kept doing it, they'd say, please step out in the hallway right now.

They'd give student an assignment to get them busy.

The teacher would go out in the classroom.

They'd addressed the behavior.

It was a developmental process that trained educators know how to do.

But the new law and the new rules basically said, every time a student is dismissed, even for a minute or two, you had to start this huge bureaucratic process, notify the principal, send the kid down there, begin a parent engagement process.

We want parents very involved.

We want to reduce suspensions and expulsions, which we have.

But you gotta allow educators to educate.

So our new rules empower educators in the classroom to address student discipline on the spot without creating this paperwork nightmare.

In this bureaucracy, there's definitely thresholds when a student is perpetually removed, where families are engaged so that we can get a learning plan for that kid.

And there are times when students need to be removed on a longer term basis.

Safety is always the number one issue.

We've always been able to remove kids for safety, but we were starting a massive and expensive bureaucratic system wit the slightest removal of a kid.

And if a teacher can't build a relationship with a student and immediately goes to a referral system, well, that's the school to prison pipeline.

We actually want relationship building in classrooms.

That's what the report does.

Thank you.

David, would you like to respond?

Yeah.

Like I said, student discipline is one of the things that teachers tell me that it' most impacting their classroom.

We have teacher now that we're policies in place across state, wher a teacher can call the principal and ask for a ten minute mental health break to step out of the class because students are being so disruptive.

That's not fair to the teacher.

It's not fair to the students.

It's certainly not fair to the parents of those students.

I think that when I was on my way over here yesterday, I called a few teachers that I know around the state and asked them about the new mental health policy that, our student discipline policy was put in place.

I was told it's mostly just, rephrasing some things changes the terminology, but it didn't really do much to move the needle on helping teachers, discipline students in the classroom.

I think most of you remember when we were kids, if we got in trouble in school, they call our parents, and they'd send us home.

And I know it was a dad with a cop before dad, I got worse.

So I got home that I got in school.

But I think that we need to give the teachers more resources to remove that discipline.

Student.

The troubled student out of the class.

Whenever we're bringin all these students into gen ed, the state has moved to thi inclusion policy where they want all the students IEP specia needs discipline, all in gen ed, and we don't have enough peer educator support in the classroom to help the teachers with those troubled students.

I think we do better there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chris what's your question for David?

Another ringing endorsement of my $500 million request for educator support.

Thank you Devin.

my question is this, David, you and I have very different experiences.

I thank you for your military service.

28 years in the Navy, that's very different than being prepared to run a school system.

I grew up in Washington state.

I attended Washington State at public institutions.

I was a classroom teacher and a school board member.

I served on a foundation board, worked in higher ed.

This is a process of developing young people.

So my question is, you stood right in this town last spring called D-I diversity, equity, inclusion work, horrible, awful stuff.

You are proud to have banded.

You said other things that were worse.

Why should students at all believe that you are a champion of equal opportunity with the words you said, including you would be happy if our universities went bankrupt in order to save America?

Now, I know you were pandering to a mega audience, but why would kids believe that you are the leader they can count on through the entire education spectrum?

I appreciate that, and I've been pretty outspoken since then on radio, TV, whatever.

To say that I wa being facetious when I said that I'm a big advocate for the skilled trades.

And, when I said during that speech, hav everyone won the skilled trades and all the university went bankrupt?

Maybe.

Great.

Well, I was being facetious.

I said I was being facetious.

I obviously don't mean that I have a college degree.

I watch the school teacher.

My sister was a college professor.

Three of my kids have degrees.

as far as the other one about the I, I would just tell anyone in this room to come to my school district and look at al the positive things that we are doing in our school district to advance harassment, intimidation, and bullying.

We make sure every child in our school is feels welcome and supported and gets all the resources and opportunities they need to get a quality education and, you know, unlike my opponent who's a career politician and can spin words really well sometimes as a, as a volunteer elected official, sometimes I misspeak.

I have said that, you know, that I own things, and I could have said som things a little better that day, but I will say just come to my school district, look at al the amazing things we're doing.

We're a leader in the stat around all the academic success we have green schools or leade and I, we're doing all we can.

We have literacy task force to do that.

Make sure our kids have all the resources to be outstanding students, and we're advancing CTE, but we're doing everything we can in my school district and my 11 years on, there to welcome all students regardless of race, color, gender, or whatever, to make sure they feel safe and welcome in our schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chris, would you like to respond?

Well, I think words do matte and I think leadership matters.

And you have half the diversity numbers of the state.

You have half the poverty numbers.

So I don't doubt your compassion.

I've never doubted that.

I have a great deal of respect for that.

But words matter and they're hurtful.

And the rest of the state is significantly more diverse.

High populations of migrant youth, a high student populations in the central Puget Sound.

They need additional support.

They are clinging to the representation of a more diverse staff in order for them to have the success that we've achieved, and we have achieved a lot more success.

So, you know, my message to you is, is, is respect.

Every student is if you're the school board member of a school district with 90% free or reduced price lunch of immigrant families who are learning English for the first time, contributing to our economy, and not dismiss it as some horrible thing.

I know it is.

I know it is something that you do.

And it's funny.

You call me a politician.

You've been in your role longer than I've been in mine, and you're an elected school board member.

But it's pandering to the extreme of your party who is latching on to this stuff.

And it's dangerous.

Nationally.

It's cause threats all over the country.

And I think it's dangerous in our state.

When we start vilifying things that are really important to learners and educators.

None of you disagre with diversity of our workforce, equity opportunities and the inclusion of folks.

It's how your businesses are going to be successful with a growing, diverse electorate.

And I don't think you should dismiss it.

I think you should apologize publicly for it.

Thank you Chris.

And that's actually a great lead into our next question, which is we know that more than half of our state's K-12 population are considered low income.

How do you propose to evaluate the needs of these students and prepare them for the world of work, so they can break out of that cycle of poverty and we're starting with you, David.

Okay.

Thank you.

what I would say that I do see the Education Opportunity Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee, which is under underneath OSP, is responsible for tracking the achievement gap in our state.

One of the eight years of the leadership of my opponent.

Achievement gap in our state has not gotten better or where it's gotten wider especially for students of color and high poverty and students with disability, they are being left behind.

I believe that we need to do more to reach out to the struggling school districts in those rural communities, in those high poverty communities, and do a better or better job of allocating the fund into those schools to make sure that those kids have the resources they need.

The opportunity achievement gap.

You know, my opponent ran eight years ago that he would narrow the opportunity gap.

That's not happening, that it's getting wider.

We have schools in our state that are more segregated today than they were 30 years ago.

it's just not it's not working.

There's schools in the Seattle public Schools that, that I've heard about and talk to teachers there again that are segregated.

And students there don't have the the funding, the technology that richer school districts get.

And the state needs to reprioritize and do more to send funds into those high poverty school districts and rural school districts that don't have the opportunity to give their students what they need to get, get a leg up so that they can do a good job when they get out of high school.

Thank you, David and Chris.

Thank you.

Sayin something doesn't make it true.

You actually need data.

What we've done in this state is get a record number of low income youth access to early learning at recor levels three and four year olds.

That' why we've seen the kindergarten readiness numbers in those gaps close.

We've now got 50,000 kids learning dual language.

When I got here, there were virtually no true two way dual language programs.

Kids teaching each other their language as they learn math and science, and English language arts.

We now have a record number of kids in high cap programs, highly capable programs.

It was less than 3.5% when I started.

It's no 7.5% of elementary school kids.

The fastest growth those high cap programs, students of color, and low income students.

Our graduation rates are at a record high level right now, with more math, more science, and more language ever being taken.

College participation rate are near record highs right now.

In the fastest growth have been Nativ American youth and black youth.

The fastest growth in dual credit.

So college and high school running start AP our students of color and low income students.

You can't just say gaps haven't been closing.

They are absolutely closing on the things that matter.

The building Blocks to Excellence test scores very flat for all students across the world, not just the United States or Washington.

So if you're only measure is a standardized test mandated by the federal government, we can have a conversation on why that's flat has a lot to do with cell phones, but the building blocks of success we're leading the nation in and we are closing gaps.

And that's why students tell us how proud they are of the programing changes in their school Thank you.

Money we've invested.

I hate cutting people off, but we are trying to stick to a time schedule here.

David, would you like to respond?

Yeah.

What I would say is that our new annual assessments just came out last week, and it shows that we did no improve overall year over year.

And if you do a deeper dive into the assessment that just came out, it shows a huge disparity in our students of color, Native American and students with disabilities.

It just came out on your website, tellingly, on that website, though, in past years they showed students that were meeting grade level.

But when the needle is not moving in the right direction, my opponent moves the goalposts.

So now those kiddos, the reporting on the website now shows students at a level two that are meeting foundational.

It's just it's gobbledygook of words.

But he's now rolling it up to make it look like the state is doing a lot better than it really is.

So when you get criticized by me, criticized by my former opponent, criticized by, criticized by NEP, the National Assessment of Educational Programs, and the Seattle Times, then something's wrong.

You don't move the goalpost.

You work to fix it.

Thank you.

Chris, share with us a little bit about we're in a room full of employers.

Your strategies for those students who are preparing for university and those students who choose a different skills and technical training.

Yeah, it really builds nicely.

On the last question, our test data has been absolutely misrepresented.

A three and a four on our one through four scale means you are achieving college and university admissions readiness.

And when you go to that university go Cougs go Dawgs go Eagles go name it.

You won't need a below 100 level course.

That's what a three and a four means.

But a two on that assessment is always meant grade level.

And the misinformatio is meant to make people afraid, to make them angry and make them frustrated because he wants to sell you on more privatization.

This is a very serious threat in our state US, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi.

They've all fallen to that.

And it' and their scores are plummeting.

Their performance is awful.

So we do this because we have 70 to 80% of our students achieving grade level standard, and about half of them are prepared by 10th grade to go on to a college or university.

But 70% of our jobs will need less than a bachelor's degree i more than a high school diploma.

This is the work I did at the Community Technical College system.

As the son of two people with a middle school education who learned the trades to survive.

This is my heart, my passion.

This is what I came in to do when I started only 38% of kids were graduating with two or more career and tech ed courses.

Today, it's 52% of kids dual credit.

So running start college in the high school AP at record high levels.

Two thirds of our kids now start college transcripts while they're with us, and we pay for it through our advocacy, we've gotten rid of all the fees in college.

In high school, my budget proposal now gets rid of all the fees for running start for kids.

We have been a national leader in this recognized nationally because you need employees at every single level who are critical thinkers, and it doesn't mean every single kid goes to a university, but he keeps abusing the test scores to tell you that that's the goal.

And somehow we're failing other kids.

Thank you David here I I'm certainly don't use any of my words for fear mongering.

I just look at the data that's on our own website and look at the data on a national assessment of educational programs that shows us number 27 in the nation.

My opponent says we're number two.

And for the last couple months I've been saying, where is he pulling the rabbit out of that?

How?

Because that dat is not showing that we're number two in the nation, or number 27.

That's just not true.

There are some pockets of schools in our state that are doing very well, but we are not doing enough for early intervention and early identification for students which are struggling, especially like with learning disabilities, around with dyslexia, we're not doing enough with our inner city youth.

Our students of color are Native American students with disability to do early intervention so that we can get them the assistanc they need as early as possible.

And I just disagree that you have to have some form of assessment s that you can evaluate a student.

And when he talk about higher graduation levels, when I travel the state, I talk to parents who say that their student can literally put their name on a test, not answer a single question, and they get a C. That's called grade inflation.

When students are graduating with inflated grades and can't pass a basic math or reading or how to grade level, they are being sent ou in the world to go work for you, not prepared, and you have to do remedial education.

It's not working.

We can do better.

Thank you.

And Chris, your follow up, we've challenge you to tell us wher this magical school district is.

That just hands out grades and you continue to not have that.

So it's good rhetoric.

It's just not true.

Let's go back to our one, two, three, four grading scale of two, which she wants to call a failing student.

Can't rea those two are going to college.

Not just technical schools, but universities and colleges, 50% of them within a yea of graduating from high school, and 60 to 70% of them are persisting from year one to year two.

That's right.

At the national average under students who got a two, which he continues to call failing because he doesn't understand the data.

Nate tells us how many states are statistically outperforming us.

It is only two in reading and only seven in math.

We've got work to do, but w are a damn high performing state with a less than well-performing funding system.

And and it's disrespectful to educators to constantly pound on our system and vilify this so that you can justify more school privatization.

Thank you.

And I struggled about whether or not to bring this up, but I decided to do it.

Both of our state's candidates for governor have expressed an interest in amending our state constitution to make the role of the Superintendent of Public Instruction an appointed position in the governor's cabinet, a opposed to an elected position, which means this could be one of the very last debates for this office.

So, David, we'll start with you.

How do you feel about that and why?

Well, I, I disagree with it being a point of position.

and I've been traveling the state and I've never uttered a word against a teacher.

Our teachers are doing amazing work in our state, but they're extremely overwhelmed.

And they tell me about it all the time.

When I'm around the state, they come up to me and tell me how much they do not feel supported by this current superintendent, and we can do better.

I will do them better.

But I think that when parents feel that their children are not getting the education they need, if they don't feel they have the support and trust in public education, it's small.

Business owners and small business communities don't feel that we are doing an effective workforce management to get them out and trained in the community.

I think that the citizens should be able to vot in a new superintendent school, not have it be a partizan position by the governor.

If that's the case, you're going to have the same political party who's already been in there for 40 years and it could be in there for 40 more, and you'll just keep appointing their person.

I think this is far too important.

It's about the future of our kids, the future of your grandkids, the future workforce development.

I think the voters should have their say in this position.

So I do not support making an appointed position.

I think it's wrong and it's a disservic to the citizen that the parents and even the teachers, if the teachers do not feel supported by their superintendent, which many across the state are telling me that.

And so our superintendents, then I think they should make the decision and vote in a new superintendent when the time comes.

Thank you.

Thank you, David and Chris, how do you feel about, a proposed constitutional amendment, which is not an easy lift, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, that's where I was going to start.

It takes up two thirds of the House in the Senate to change that in a vote of the people.

Here's what I've said.

A it's not the first step, but it is a viable option to make governors more accountable to public ed.

We get a bully pulpit as we run for this.

Whether David wins this election, I want to win reelection.

I get to put budget requests out there that really reflect the nature of our communities.

I have the endorsement of teachers, of classified school employees, of career and ticket association.

Everyone who's endorsed institutionally has endorsed us because they know how much we support their work.

That isn't what's in question here.

He talks about Partizan.

He's the only one officially standing in front of you, endorsed by a state political party, the Republican Party.

So I don't thin it gets more Partizan than that.

And so you can suggest that a governor would make it more Partizan.

I think the idea is that a governor would then have to take greater responsibility for the budget of K-12 if it wasn't an office down the street in the old Capitol building.

That said, it's step two.

Step one efficiency.

We have seven agencies in the state that over the last eight years, the legislature has created.

They pulled it off of Ospi different standards board for teachers, a different board for graduation requirements, a different board for career and tech ed, a different board for college transitions.

We're spending $3 million of your taxpayer money on salaries and benefit for executives on those boards.

Make them efficient.

Get it back under OSP for efficiency.

And if the voters still want to put it under the governor, I will support that.

But do the efficiency for the taxpayer first.

Thank you.

Would you like to respond, David?

well, it is a complex situation.

We have way too much bureaucracy in our state, way too much proxy, and having multiple oversights for education.

I think that we could streamline some of that.

I think that we've got too bloated.

I know that in the eight years of my opponent's been in his position, he's added 100 new positions to us by high pay, but we sure haven' seen the benefit over the years.

Academic standard five years ago, 1 in 4 students was that level one at the lowest standard a reading today, 1 in 3.

In math, it's worse.

It's over 250,000 students in our school district out of a million, or at the lowest level under his eight eight years of leadership.

Way worse in just the five years pre-pandemic.

We can do better.

So I believe the voters need to make that choice, not a governor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And one more question coming from you.

before we get to closing statements and Chris, we'll start with you.

What are your plans to address the massive learning loss of students during the Covid pandemic?

Would you ever shut down the schools again like they were during the pandemic?

Was it the right or the wrong thing to do in the first place?

Yeah.

Thank you.

The massive school learning loss was 2% of our scores.

Our test score, raw score fell 2%.

We've recovered 1% of that.

So let's be really clear.

There are learning challenges that have been happening in the country and internationally, particularly in reading going back 12 years, as soon as the smartphone was in the hands of 50% or more of our children in the United States, reading scores started to go down.

So this wasn' just about a pandemic question.

The recovery has been robust.

Despite what David says, math scores have recovered every single year we've recovered in reading and flatten out a little bit, so we've doubled down on reading supports, including some I supported software that I think will be very, very powerful.

We had to shut dow because public health officials made that recommendation to the governor.

It's the governor's call, and I support it, and I support it today.

If we had the same pandemic, that took a million lives, but we could wear a mask, which his moms for Liberty supporters thinks was ridiculous.

If we had to go remote for a while, which we've now learned how to do very effectively, I would never choose that as a learning option.

But in a pandemic crisis, when you don't know whether a virus is going to strike the lives of young child children, you absolutely need into public health first.

We did it well.

We recovered as soon as we had a ubiquitous vaccine.

We went back to in-person.

It was saving 6 t 8000 lives as a result of that.

So we were trading off some impacts to kids, whic were very real for saving lives.

That's what the governor had in his hands, and that's what he chose to do.

All the courts upheld his executive authority when some of David supporter opposed it and violated the law, their own voters pulled the out of their school board seats because they wanted school safety to lead over political ideology.

Next pandemic won't look like this one will certainly be better prepared if children's lives are at risk, and we don't know whether the vaccine will work or not, you absolutely protect kids first.

Thank you.

And David, thank you.

I would probably argue that some of Chris Wright supporters also didn't really like wearing masks either.

our school board never shut down during the pandemic.

We wore a mask every time, and I made sur as president of the school board that everyone there wore a mask.

We asked them to leave.

So it was a difficult time.

We had one of the more draconian lockdowns in the country.

We were one of the last reopening schools where other states were starting to reopen when it was stable, and it was proven that students, young children weren't as, likely to get Covid as older people would in my school district.

I'm proud to say we had students, our special needs, our most vulnerable students in class on day one.

When first Covid came out, we worked with our school union and teacher union to work that out so that we get our most vulnerable kids in school on day one and and it was really beneficial for us coming out of Covid.

We realized it was a learning loss.

So we set up a literacy task force.

We flew around the state, sent people out to learn what the science of reading so that we could do a better job of reaching out to these kids.

And that's wh our state is one of the leaders as far as academic performance, because we took it serious.

And, I personally don't like to say would we ever shut down again?

I hope that will never happen again, but I can't look forward 30 years into the future and predict what might happen.

Thanks.

Thank you, David and Chris, would you like to respond?

Well, again, it's a lot of federal dollars that was, used for the learning recovery.

So again congratulations to our district for being so efficient with using those dollars.

We're at the point now where we know the impact of Covid was measurable.

But the longer term impact from social media, the fact that kids are reading less and candidly watching less television, but they're using social media as a replacement for that, and that is not high quality reading.

We have a little bit of a motto we're building in our organization, which is fewer screens, more books, print books.

That's why we have to get our legislature to invest again, as if we were going to be the best performing state.

You got to invest like that.

Don' rely on one time federal money.

Thank you.

And now we are ready for our closing statements.

David, you will go first.

Oh, I would first.

Okay.

just real quick, if you doubt any of the things I said about suspending, please visit my website.

I'd be happy to send you all the documents I'll be referring to in an email.

Thank you.

I want to again thank Abby an GSI for hosting today's debate.

I also want to thank Chris for a robust discussion today.

When a football team had made its analogy.

When a pro football team is losing eight years in a row, they probably are going to fire the coach.

And that's what's been happening in our in our state public education.

Although he talks good talks in circles, if you look at the data, we are going down, down, down.

We are not number two or number 27.

During my opponent's tenure, we've seen 100,000 fewer kids meeting high level standards for English, math, student discipline, crisis crippling classrooms, very to adequately fund special ed in action on one of the leadin causes of student mental health, cell phone and social media and weaponization of local school boards.

It's no wonder the Seattle Times last year called him a cheerleader for mediocrity.

Simply put, our kids can't afford four more years, of course, right?

All we need a change is superintendent.

I will focus on student succes by returning to academic rigor while providing supports for the kids who are struggling the most.

Encourage parent involvement to lower absentee rates and support student success.

Help overwhelmed teachers by fully funding special Eds, we can get peers in the classroom advocating for expanding CTE programs to offer additional pathways for our students, and fix funding crisis impact in our local districts across the state by ensuring the state is doing their constitutional duty to fully fund education, please visit my website like David olson.com and I appreciate your vote.

Thank you.

David.

Chris, your closing statement.

Thank you again, AWB, Rene and TBWA and Microsoft for your sponsorship of this particular debate.

You've got some more coming along.

I hope you'll ask some education questions.

Maybe at the highest office as well.

I will say thank you fo the opportunity to do this work.

As I said to you before, I have spent my entire life dedicated to public education.

The building blocks that result in student achievement we are making fantastic progress on.

I will grant you, standardized tests are challenging because they're challenging across the country, but our relative performanc to other states has us improving against those other states.

Right now.

And I like this analogy.

You do fire a coach if it's not going well, but the league doesn't fire the general manager.

I'm the general manager in my current role, and that's the one he's seeking for the league.

And I have 295 franchises out there called school districts under his school district.

That has half the poverty and a half the students of color.

64% of his kids are performin at what he considers standard in third grade math, and it's down to 44% by 10th grade math.

In one of the wealthiest school districts.

So either you acknowledg the math test is trying to drive every kid to calculus, and we should rethink it.

Or you have to consider the coaches in his position right now who have led one of the wealthiest school districts to lower performance.

You can't have it both ways.

So let's get beyond the ide that test scores define children kindergarten readiness, nutrition access, dual language third grade reading, middle school challenge, high cap programs, dual credit opportunities.

These are the building blocks to success.

This is why we were just ranked number four in the nation.

Education performance number two ranking in the National for our educators.

And the Seattle Times endorsed my campaign.

Given what they know about the ideology that backs his real intentions.

Thank you for having us today.

Thank you.

And can we thank both of these candidates for having the courage to stand for public office?

And I also just want to give a quick thank you to the Association of Washington Business for hosting not only this, but three more to be today.

And I want to remind you that as Susan B Anthony once said, someone struggled for your right to vote.

Use it.

Thank you for being here.