Spokane Public Schools elections (2015)

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2015 Spokane Public Schools Elections
Primary Election date:
August 4, 2015
General Election date:
November 3, 2015
Table of Contents
About the district Method of election Elections What was at stake? Candidate survey responses Key deadlines Additional elections External links
See also
Washington Spokane Public Schools Spokane County, Washington ballot measures Local ballot measures, Washington

Two seats on the Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors were up for general election on November 3, 2015. Since more than two candidates filed for Position 3, a primary election was held on August 4, 2015. Members of the board were elected at-large to numbered positions.

In the Position 3 race, incumbent Rocky Treppiedi faced challengers Donald Dover and Jerrall Haynes. After finishing second to Treppiedi in the primary, Haynes defeated the incumbent in the general election.

Since incumbent Jeffrey Bierman did not file for re-election, candidates Paul Schneider and Patricia Kienholz went head-to-head for the open Position 4 seat. Schneider won the open seat. Bierman had served on the board since 2008.

Patricia Kienholz and Paul Schneider participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. To read their responses, check out the "Ballotpedia survey responses" section below.

The district received statewide attention in 2015 due to teacher protests and strikes over state funding, class sizes and pay. It also saw a 21.1 percent graduation rate increase from 2008 to 2014, following a history of high dropout rates. Additionally, on September 4, 2015, the Washington Supreme Court decided that charter schools were unconstitutional and should therefore not receive public funding. This ruling caused concern for many district residents.

See also: What was at stake in the 2015 Spokane Public Schools election?

About the district

See also: Spokane Public Schools, Washington

Spokane Public Schools is located in Spokane County, Wash.

Spokane Public Schools is based in Spokane, the county seat of Spokane County, in eastern Washington. The county was home to an estimated 484,318 residents in 2014, according to the United States Census Bureau. Spokane Public Schools was the second-largest school district in Washington in the 2012-2013 school year, serving 29,032 students.

Demographics

Spokane County underperformed in comparison to Washington as a whole in terms of higher education achievement, median household income and poverty rate from 2009 to 2013. The United States Census Bureau found that 28.4 percent of county residents aged 25 years and older had earned a bachelor's degree or higher, in comparison to 31.9 percent statewide. The median household income in the county was $49,233, compared to $59,478 for the state. The poverty rate was 15.4 percent, compared to 13.4 percent for the entirety of Washington.

Racial Demographics, 2014
Race	Spokane County (%)	Washington (%)
White	89.8	80.7
Black or African American	1.9	4.1
American Indian and Alaska Native	1.7	1.9
Asian	2.3	8.2
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander	0.4	0.7
Two or More Races	3.8	4.5
Hispanic or Latino	5.2	12.2

Presidential Voting Pattern, Spokane County
Year	Democratic Vote (%)	Republican Vote (%)
2012	45.7	51.5
2008	48.2	49.3
2004	43.0	55.0
2000	43.4	51.9

Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

Voter and candidate information

The Spokane Board of Directors consists of five members who serve six-year terms. While members serve the district at-large, they are elected to numbered positions instead of appearing on a joint ballot. There was a primary election on August 4, 2015, for Position 3 since three candidates filed for the seat. A general election was held on November 3, 2015, for Positions 3 and 4.

Election rules in Washington require candidates to pay filing fees equal to 1 percent of a position's annual salary. Board members in Spokane could be reimbursed up to $4,800 for district activities but did not receive salaries, which eliminated the filing fee. Candidates were required to file nominating petitions by May 15, 2015, to qualify for the November ballot.

Elections

2015

This symbol, , next to a candidate's name indicates his or her participation in Ballotpedia's school board candidate survey. Click the image next to a candidate's name to jump to the section that details his or her responses.

Position 3

Results

Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors, Position 3 General Election, 6-year term, 2015
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Jerrall Haynes	50.7%	23,359
Rocky Treppiedi Incumbent	48.3%	22,241
Write-in votes	1%	461
Total Votes		46,061
Source: Spokane County, Washington, "Election Results: 11/03/2015-General Election," November 24, 2015

Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors, Position 3 Primary Election, 6-year term, 2015
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Rocky Treppiedi Incumbent	41.8%	12,094
Jerrall Haynes	30.7%	8,877
Donald Dover	26.2%	7,570
Write-in votes	1.39%	403
Total Votes		28,944
Source: Spokane County, Washington, "Election Results," accessed August 20, 2015

Candidates

Rocky Treppiedi		Jerrall Haynes
	Incumbent Member since 1996 Administrative law judge and practicing attorney		Spokane NAACP secretary Veteran, United States Air Force

Candidate defeated in the primary

Donald Dover
	2014 Democratic candidate, Washington House of Representatives

Position 4

Results

Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors, Position 4 General Election, 6-year term, 2015
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Paul Schneider	54.5%	24,532
Patricia Kienholz	44.5%	20,045
Write-in votes	0.98%	440
Total Votes		45,017
Source: Spokane County, Washington, "Election Results: 11/03/2015-General Election," November 24, 2015

Candidates

Paul Schneider		Patricia Kienholz
	Educator, Central Valley School District		Nonprofit professional

Endorsements

The following is a list of endorsements made in the 2015 Spokane Public School District elections:

Candidate endorsements
Endorsement	Jerrall Haynes	Patricia Kienholz	Paul Schneider	Rocky Treppiedi
Political parties
Spokane County Democrats
Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart
Educational Service District (ESD) 101 Superintendent Mike Dunn
Spokane County GOP
Organizations
Spokane Education Association
Washington Education Association
Individuals
Dr. George J. Peterson, founding dean, Eugene T. Moore School of Education, Clemson University
Gary Pollard, chair, City of Spokane Riverside Neighborhood Council
Alexander Roberts, coordinator for student standards, University of Idaho
Sheriff Ozzie D. Knezovich, Spokane County Sheriff's Office

Campaign finance

See also: List of school board campaign finance deadlines in 2015

Candidates received a total of $22,373.60 and spent a total of $18,322.27 as of October 14, 2015, according to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission.

Candidate	Contributions	Expenditures	Cash on hand
Position 3
Rocky Treppiedi	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Donald Dover	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Jerrall Haynes	$3,595.00	$1,188.03	$2406.97
Position 4
Patricia Kienholz	$2,035.00	$1,516.06	$518.94
Paul Schneider	$16,743.60	$15,618.18	$1125.42

The Washington Public Disclosure Commission is the regulatory body for campaign finance in Washington school board elections.

Candidates who raised and spent no more than $5,000 in aggregate and who did not receive more than $500 from any one contributor, including themselves, could participate in "mini reporting." These candidates were required to file a candidate registration statement and keep a record of their contributors and expenditures, but they were not required to report them unless they exceed the stated thresholds. In those cases, they were required to switch their filing status from "mini" to "full" reporting by August 31, 2015.

Contributions to school board candidate committees were subject to the following limits:

• State parties or caucus political committees (separately): $0.95 per registered voter from January 1 to December 31
• County and legislative district parties (combined): $0.50 per registered voter from January 1 to December 31
• Individuals, PACS, unions, corporations or other entities (separately): $950 per primary and general election

School board candidate committees were prohibited from receiving contributions from other candidate committees. No contributors except state committees of political parties could give more than $5,000 in aggregate in the 21 days prior to the election.

Past elections

Information about earlier elections can be found by clicking [show] at the right.

2013 See also: Spokane Public Schools elections (2013) Position 1 Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors, Position 1 General Election, 6-year term, 2013 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Susan Chapin Incumbent 96.8% 32,169      Nonpartisan Write-in votes 3.2% 1,070 Total Votes 33,239 Source: Spokane County Elections, "Election Results," accessed November 26, 2013 Position 2 Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors, Position 2 General Election, 6-year term, 2013 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Bob Douthitt Incumbent 54.1% 22,971      Nonpartisan Sally Fullmer 44.6% 18,936      Nonpartisan Write-in votes 1.3% 558 Total Votes 42,465 Source: Spokane County Elections, "Election Results," accessed November 26, 2013

What was at stake?

Issues in the district

Teachers protest over state funding, class sizes and pay

Voting on Education
Policy
Education policy
Ballot Measures
By state
By year
Not on ballot
Local School bonds Local school tax School budgets School redistricting Local education measures

State legislators and Washington school teachers faced off over funding disputes in 2015. This led to teacher strikes and threats of pay retribution from Republican politicians. These issues were highlighted across the state through a series of one-day walkouts beginning in April 2015. On May 27, 2015, teachers from Spokane Public Schools and the East Valley School District staged a one-day walkout protest of the state's handling of classroom sizes, cost-of-living pay increases and other concerns related to public education funding. Teachers from Seattle Public Schools, the Issaquah School District and the Mercer Island School District staged a similar protest on May 19, 2015. According to a report by The Spokesman Review published on May 20, 2015, 65 percent of nearly 2,500 Spokane Education Association members were in favor of the strike.

Initiative 1351, which was passed narrowly by voters in 2014, required "the legislature to allocate funding for smaller K-12 class sizes, with extra class-size reductions for all grades in defined high-poverty schools and for grades K-3 in all schools; and for increased student support staffing, including counselors, teaching assistants, librarians, and others." At the time of the protests, neither chamber's budget proposal included funding for this initiative's requirements.

An earlier initiative related to cost-of-living pay increases for teachers from 2000, Initiative 732, passed by a 25.38 percent margin. The measure was supposed to secure cost-of-living salary adjustments for teachers and other school district employees. However, the legislature suspended those increases from 2009 to 2015. As The Seattle Times explained, "That doesn’t mean teachers’ pay has not increased at all over that time—teachers early in their careers still get yearly increases, and some districts have provided raises to all teachers through local tax levies."

Education spending initiatives were proposed for the 2015 ballot, as well; Initiative 1388 would have prohibited the legislature from spending increases in state revenue unless two-thirds of the increase was spent on education programs. This measure did not go to the ballot.

See also: Washington 2015 ballot measures

Voters approve 2014-2015 bond

A bond levy worth $145 million was approved by voters in a special election held February 10, 2015. The levy needed 60 percent of the vote to pass and did so with 71 percent. Across the county, 18 out of 21 school tax proposals up for a vote were accepted. According to the district's website, the money is set to go toward modernizing and replacing old buildings, improving safety and security, upgrading technology, and providing for various improvement projects across the district. Officials in the district also vowed to maintain a "commitment to not increase local tax rate at no higher than $1.96 per $1,000 of assessed property value, keeping costs manageable for future Spokane generations."

The district is also set to receive $25 million in matching funds from the state and has $35 million left over from 2009's bond levy. That means the district has a total of $205 million with which to perform improvements.

District enforces state vaccine law

In early 2015, the district announced that it would be removing students from classrooms on April 13, 2015, if they did not have current vaccination records or an exemption waiver. The law affected the 922 students who did not have the necessary paperwork on file as of April 2015.

The district began contacting parents in February 2015 and informing them about the law, which states that district students must either have an up-to-date vaccination record or a waiver explaining why they are exempt. The state provides three types of waivers to those parents opting out of vaccination: philosophical, religious and medical. The law further states that if an outbreak occurs at the school, unvaccinated students will be sent home for 21 days. If neither option is chosen, either vaccination or exemption by waiver, the student will receive an emergency expulsion, according to Kevin Morrison, director of communications for Spokane Public Schools.

Graduation rate sees improvement

Graduation Rates in Spokane Public Schools District (%)
Year	Graduation Rate	Dropout Rate
2008	61.9	8.0
2009	64.7	7.9
2010	73.4	5.2
2011	76.7	5.0
2012	76.6	5.2
2013	79.5	Data not yet available
2014	83.0	Data not yet available

After struggling for years with a high dropout rate, the graduation rate in Spokane Public Schools hit 83 percent in 2014 in conjunction with a trend of lowering dropout rates. The elevation comes in stark contrast to 2008, when only six out of 10 district students were finishing high school. According to a Spokesman Review article, in 2014 the widespread concern "triggered two grant-funded studies, led to new dropout intervention programs, launched community partnerships and inspired the creation of a database to track student behavior, attendance and grades." The result was 1,000 mentored students, food given to 2,500 families by area food banks and a boost in students given the opportunity to tour college campuses. Among others, area business leaders, philanthropists and volunteers were heralded for contributing to the cause.

Superintendent Shelley Redinger said that the strides made were encouraging; however, she emphasized that the work was not finished. "We have to figure out who we are still losing," she said.

The dropout rate threw into question whether or not any of the Spokane district high schools were considered "dropout factories," a term coined by Johns Hopkins University to denote high schools with a dropout rate of 40 percent or worse. In a 2007 list compiled by the university's researchers, no high schools in Spokane met those guidelines. Statistics showed that Spokane's district dropout rate for the 2007-2008 school year was an estimated eight percent, falling well below the guidelines to make it on the "dropout factory" list. The most "dropout factories" were in Tacoma Public Schools, with all of the district's comprehensive high schools ending up on the list.

Charter school implementation in district

Charter schools emerged as a new issue in the district in the 2013 election following the narrow approval of Initiative 1240 in 2012. The statewide initiative allowed charter schools in public school districts for the first time in the state, with an initial allowance of 40 charter schools by 2017. Superintendent Shelley Redinger has been a charter school advocate since her appointment in 2012, and the district applied to the state shortly thereafter to develop authorized charter programs. The Washington State Board of Education approved Spokane as the first district with charter school authorization powers on September 11, 2013.

On September 4, 2015, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that charter school law is unconstitutional under the common schools definition in the state's constitution. Therefore, the court argued, they would not be eligible for public funding. On September 24, 2015, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson asked the court to reconsider its ruling or, at the very least, push back the date it would go into effect until the end of the school year. Ferguson stated, "Given the significant impacts of this ruling on Washington students and their families, we are respectfully asking the Supreme Court to take another look at this decision." According to the Office of the Attorney General, "The Rules of Appellate Procedure do not specify a timeline for the court to rule on motions for reconsideration."

Ballotpedia survey responses

Patricia Kienholz and Paul Schneider participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. The following sections display their responses to the survey questions.

Top priorities

When asked what her top priorities would be if elected, Kienholz stated:

Patricia Kienholz

“	My top priorities are: (1) closing the remedial course gap for students entering college required to take college-offered remedial courses in mathematics and English; (2) improving and providing special education, STEM, arts integration, English as a second language, and underserved students; (3) school safety; (4) workforce development.	”
—Patricia Kienholz (2015)

When asked what his top priorities would be if elected, Schneider stated:

Paul Schneider

“	My top priority on the board will be to work hard to ensure that the 15% of kids who are not on track for graduation have the support and systems in place to help them get back on track. I will also work hard to identify programs that are seeking to intervene early in the lives of struggling families to better ensure success in the long term for those families.	”
—Paul Schneider (2015)

Ranking the issues

The candidates were asked to rank the following issues by importance in the school district, with 1 being the most important and 7 being the least important. This table displays the candidates' rankings from most to least important:

Issue importance ranking
Issue	Kienholz's responses	Schneider's responses
Expanding arts education	6	7
Expanding career-technical education	5	5
Balancing or maintaining the district's budget	4	4
Improving college readiness	3	3
Closing the achievement gap	1	1
Improving education for special needs students	2	6
Expanding school choice options	7	2

Positions on the issues

The candidates were asked to answer 10 multiple choice and short answer questions from Ballotpedia regarding significant issues in education and the school district. Links to the candidates' responses can be found below.

• Patricia Kienholz survey responses
• Paul Schneider survey responses

Key deadlines

The following dates were key deadlines for the 2015 Washington school board elections:

Deadline	Event
May 11-15, 2015	Candidate filing period
May 18, 2015	Deadline for candidates to withdraw
July 14, 2015	Pre-primary campaign finance report due
July 27, 2015	Voter registration deadline for primary election
July 28, 2015	Pre-primary campaign finance report due
August 4, 2015	Primary election day
September 10, 2015	Post-primary campaign finance report due
October 13, 2015	Pre-general campaign finance report due
October 26, 2015	Voter registration deadline for general election
October 27, 2015	Pre-general campaign finance report due
November 3, 2015	General Election Day
November 24, 2015	Election results certified
December 10, 2015	Post-general campaign finance report due
January 11, 2016	End of election cycle campaign finance report due

Additional elections on the ballot

See also: Washington elections, 2015

In addition to school board elections, voters also decided on six statewide ballot measures.

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Spokane Public Schools Washington. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Spokane Public Schools elections (2015) - Google News

See also

Spokane Public Schools	Washington	School Boards
Spokane Public Schools elections (2013) List of school districts in Washington	Washington school board elections, 2015 Public education in Washington Local ballot measures, Washington	School board elections, 2015 School board elections, 2014

External links

Suggest a link

• Spokane Public Schools
• Spokane County Elections