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Confidence in the public schools is at an all time low and no wonder why with local school board meetings devolving into shouting matches over politicized social issues, full time think tanks attacking public education to advance thinly veiled anti-EU union agendas.

And on the flip side, the school's never ending thirst for almost unlimited funding to solve the endless list of academic, behavioral and social problems.

Students bring to school.

Small wonder we're in a crisis of confidence.

While the issues are big, schools should be simple, but test scores revealed the three R's just can't stick when chaos reigns.

We're discussing it all next on Northwest Now.

(MUSIC) You can't fix what you can't measure.

But unfortunately, the needle hasn't really moved on national student success since about 2012.

But recently, instead of the continued flat lining of student performance, the pandemic brought steep declines and further exacerbated the yawning achievement gaps when race and poverty are factored in.

In 2021, in Washington State, just 52% of all students met standards in English and only 33% in math.

Layer in mass shootings and absolutely catastrophic mental health crisis among the young.

And a year of isolation during COVID.

And you have a recipe for lower enrollment, higher absenteeism and violence.

And staff looking for an exit.

It is in that environment that we begin the 2223 academic year and welcome the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal.

Chris, thanks so much for coming to Northwest now and our annual discussion for Back to School.

You know, when I look at the list of issues facing the public schools, I mean, there are so many things that have really elevated themselves into what you might call crisis level.

And the first one that's being talked about nationally is the teacher shortage.

What is your perspective on it?

Why is that happening nationally?

And then how is Washington State doing relative to the rest of the nation?

Yeah, I think across the country we've seen a decline in the number of young people who want to teach.

We've seen this for more than a decade.

So it isn't new to the pandemic.

Our state has largely avoided this compared to other states.

Really good starting salaries compared to those states.

We've got this measurement after five years that all teachers have to be at, and so I feel like we're pretty fortunate here.

We definitely have some shortages by subject.

Our biggest risk is still, you know, a bus driver or somebody to serve a meal at this point in time.

But we do see pockets of it in our state.

Just we are blessed to not have the same challenges as they do around the country.

In a weird way, has the reduction of enrollment helped to some degree?

One of the real dark chapters of the COVID crisis is that 40,000 students in Washington state have really just kind of disappeared and nobody knows where they really went.

Has that helped take some of the pressure off the system and kind of a perverse, unintended consequences way?

What's your read on that?

Not really.

So 40,000 students represents about 4% of our enrollments.

So it's not significant enough to really change your your system of your teaching workforce.

Think about being a fourth grade teacher.

If you have 24 kids instead of 25 kids, we still need a teacher in the classroom.

Now, I will say we know exactly where the 40,000 students are.

I mean, not my location, but we know that about 20,000 of them were with us.

And then they have made different choices, private schools and some are already returning.

And then about 20,000 or more of those students, we've actually never had them.

They were supposed to start with us as kindergartners three years ago or two years ago or last year.

And their families said, you know, I'm going to wait a little bit until this all kind of shakes out.

So for for more than half of those students, they've never been a public school student.

But they're coming in now and for the first time as first grader, a second grader, a third grader.

And that's got its own challenges.

We talked about a couple of these top line crises in American public schools, and another one of them is school security after, you know, the horror of Uvaldi.

And we're all just shocked by that.

How top of mind is it in Washington state?

We always think, well, it can't happen.

It well, it can happen anywhere.

We know that.

So what's happening in your office?

What are school districts saying?

Talk to me a little bit about that.

It can happen everywhere.

Thankfully, this is an extremely low probability scenario, but you plan for it being a reality.

So, again, blessed to be in Washington, a bipartisan group of legislators, both the House and Senate Republicans and Democrats for years have been investing not just in better ways to secure buildings physically as we build them and redesign them, but also giving more personnel resources to districts who make choices around what they're going to do for security, public or private, or maybe they put their money in mental health, for example, as the best deterrent.

And then, of course, we have what's called threat assessment.

We've been a national leader in this.

We have teams of people who help identify students who are really at risk and potentially at risk of violence to themselves or others.

And we create an intervention team very, very rapidly, and that's in every region of the state now.

So there's no way to totally avoid the risk.

But Washington state's been a national leader on this.

I feel very, very fortunate where we are today.

But there's always more you can do and we're prepared to have the legislature do even more.

This session.

If we'll ever see teachers armed in schools in Washington, D.C., it doesn't feel like it to me.

But no, you know, the data is just really, really clear that the probability of ever deterring something because it's so low risk that there's a threat anyways doesn't even compare to the fact that you'd be putting thousands of guns in the hands of teachers and potentially accessible by students.

Teachers have their own domestic violence challenges at the times.

They have their own mental health crises.

The worst scenario, if you want to avoid violence from guns, is to put guns in proximity to kids.

Another element item that that is elevated to the crisis level across the country is this exacerbation of an ongoing mental health crisis.

The American Academy of Child Psychiatry declared a mental health emergency among the youth in this country.

There's grief involved, economic hardship, and it seems like all the existing problems got worse during COVID, that we're already on a roll with social media or whatever you want to blame it with.

It seems to me that a building administrator or a teacher in a classroom these days is stepping into the baseline cases.

I'm in a mental health crisis.

It really does seem that bad when you look at some of the research.

What are you seeing and what are you talking to school districts about?

We're seeing it increase in terms of the risk.

We've certainly seen it for years and it is true that this was building long before COVID.

I think the isolation of the pandemic causes bigger challenges because where we would normally intervene and have interventions and we have screening tools, even with very young kids, some of those metrics sort of went out of the way for a while and then you come back.

We were totally in-person last year and all of that returns and you don't have the continuity of the connection the same way.

So we've had leadership from the University of Washington, this state, for a very long time.

We tracked student mental health data pretty consistently.

We actually survey students every two years, and they've been telling us this for a while, which is why you've seen our legislature put a lot more money into school.

Psychologists, therapists, mental health, both in the community and in the school.

So again, the investments are there.

But I sort of like in this always to nutrition, we serve really healthy meals in schools on balance.

But when kids get 75 or 80% of their calories in other ways with lots of sugars and salts, the school isn't exactly going to solve nutrition.

And just as we have all these great interventions in schools, that they go home and they're four or five, six, 7 hours on social media or on other platforms where we're bullying or some other thing can hit them.

It is awfully hard for a school to be bigger than society at large.

And you've got these Esser funds that have to be spent, a lot of federal dollars coming in for things like counseling and tutoring and mental health.

But these folks with master's degrees don't grow on trees, even if even with the money.

Can you hire?

Can you can you populate?

Can you see that throughout the system?

No, not very quickly.

So we have districts who have been able to access some personnel of their own.

But most of the districts have said where we can't find folks, we're going to go contract this in the community.

But those community based providers are absolutely overwhelmed.

Talk to anyone now who's a mental health therapist anyway, and they'll say their clients on the public and private sector side are really overwhelming them.

And the last thing I'd say is it's all one time money.

So if you're a school district who's also managing your financials, you don't make a long term commitment to something that's going to go away.

And that really has been problematic for us.

Talking about some of those build back better dollars.

There is a massive need for counseling for social, emotional and academic deficits.

The McKinsey study that I go back to again shows that African-American kids are five months behind, and the wealth gaps in the achievement gaps that we saw and we've you and I have talked about frequently that we're there, instead of stalling or slightly going down, have actually widened because of COVID.

It has really kicked off kind of a new round of this problem.

That has to be discouraging.

And can some of this even with difficulties hiring that you just mentioned, can some of this additional money help with that?

It can, and it is.

And if you kind of take the long term history of this, this, again, been a problem for a very long time.

We always talk about the five or 6000 hour gap.

Income inequality is the biggest factor here.

Families that have resources are still engaging their kids over the summer.

They're doing extra curricular activities.

They find ways to keep the continuity of learning and when you don't have those resources, at a minimum, summer is a big step backwards.

Now, imagine COVID, where so many kids were isolated for a while, so that's why we worked as hard as we could get back to school, get the supports in place.

We do catch kids up over time and we will and we're already seeing improvement, but it'll take a little while.

Unfortunately, politics is a piece of your job and a building principal's job now, too.

A Gallup poll says only 28% of the American population has a great deal of confidence in the country's public schools.

Arizona is on its way to vouchers.

It seems like that.

And it seems like the anti-public school school choice movement is really it.

This may be their time.

Is there any concern about that?

How do you reduce the temperature, I guess the political temperature in public schools to support public schools?

You know, information we're in the education business.

So educating our communities about the value of it is most important.

That same study had the public very cynical about almost all the institutions.

Yeah, government as a whole.

Private sector, corporation as a whole.

There's very little that they trust, except the more local it is, the more faith that they have in those systems.

The average person in the public doesn't believe the federal government's going to do anything for them.

The state government, maybe their local school district or their city, they're a lot more positive about.

We saw that even in the depths of the of the of the COVID pandemic, our school levy passage rate, where local voters are making a decision it held up where it has been for many, many years.

So the percentage was a little bit lower.

But the overall passage rate was very, very high.

So again, it's what do you believe in?

It's what I can see and touch.

I know my is good.

I know my teachers are good.

I know the local principal.

They do a good job.

I just don't believe anybody else is doing a good job.

That's pretty natural in political mentality.

What's troubling is that there's a very concerted effort by folks to make us not confident in any institution.

Yeah, because they then thrive in that.

They profit from that, they benefit from that.

I also say I think you're very right, the research about Congress always came back the same way.

People hate Congress, but they love their local congressman.

Right.

So you love him.

He's a he's one of the good ones.

Same thing with schools, which I think is very true, at least it has been historically.

But you're seeing a lot of parents now, a lot of stand up shouting matches, divisiveness, even in small local school districts.

This has infected that that dynamic.

And it just gives me a lot of concern about the future of the institution.

Um, what are your thoughts about that?

Again, trying to, trying to lower that temperature.

I know you mentioned education, but is there anything else that, that that can be said to let parents know that the professionals got this?

We do try if you believe that public school teachers are in it for the right reasons, and I believe they are they give their entire professional lives to developing young people.

They know what's going on in that classroom.

There's a science to it.

It's not just that that teacher standing in front of 25 kids every day, there is a science to reading and mathematics and numeracy, and they need instructional time with kids.

Our job is to try to keep as much of that out of the classroom as possible so they can focus on teaching and learning.

And I would just say to those who thrive in the chaos, who want us all to be afraid, whether it's government or businesses or or schools, I understand your profit motivation and your ideological motivation.

These are folks who want to privatize everything.

They privatize the court system.

If they could, I think, yeah, it isn't helpful for young people and it isn't good for their mental health and it isn't good for our society.

The foundation of that of the democracy is a broadly accessible public education, which we've now made available for all day kindergarten.

We're getting more three and four year olds, so we're seeing improvement.

And it would be a whole lot easier if folks went into really trying to tear it down over their political ideology Chris.

Right.

Well, thanks so much for coming in northwest now.

Thank you.

Let's continue our conversation now with Tacoma public school superintendent Josh Garcia and Bethel superintendent of schools Tom Siegel.

Thanks, both of you for coming to Northwest now.

Great to have a discussion with some superintendents.

Talk a little bit about conditions on the ground with specific school districts.

Josh, I want to start with you.

You know, we've heard a lot about some additional resources coming in from the feds with Build Back Better and Title one and some of those things.

And you and I have talked in the past about the need for counseling and tutoring and a lot of those extras that come along because COVID kind of exacerbated this this achievement gap.

And some of the other things the research are showing.

Are you getting those resources?

Do you have them?

Can you find them?

How are you doing?

Yeah, it's it's a great question and an ongoing challenge.

And so one of the things that we learned in last year is oftentimes when we went to partnerships, they weren't ready to get up and running.

And so we're really excited to enhance a few different things for kids.

On the social emotional learning side expand some curriculum options for our secondary students, the Beyond the Bell program with our community partners to give them a safe place to engage for 3 to 6 and some online tutoring that's available 24 seven 365 days a year is really some things that we're excited that kids didn't have full access to last year, and now they're going to have some access in there.

So those are some of the highlights, extra supports inside the schools, social worker supports some counseling and a number of great community partners, comprehensive life resources, multi care leaning in to try to say, how do we help kids outside the day and inside the day?

Tom, Flipside of the same question to you.

If you have additional resources, that's great.

It doesn't mean you can find people with master's degrees out there hanging off the trees that want to come to Bethel and buy a house.

Are you have you been able to hire?

How are you doing in terms of implementing some of the changes you want to see?

Well, the total number of teachers are adequate, but, you know, we've not had a surplus of teachers.

I mean, it's been tight, but we've filled the critical positions, like Josh was just saying, in the area of social emotional learning, the counselors and so on.

So forth, where, you know, we have some which just barely the right number based on the funding.

But we've done one really interesting thing this last year, and that's we have a contract with Hazel Health and there's a telemedicine organization that provides mental health support and also the physical health support.

And that should be a step in the right direction, because right now my understanding is to get an actual appointment if you have insurance for mental health is 4 to 6 months for a kid.

In this case, Hazel health is saying two weeks.

So that's a huge improvement.

We are also out far enough away from Tacoma and from Puyallup in the Bethel School District.

We don't have a hospital and we have very limited client clinics.

So although it's a slower process, we have actually been building school based health clinics.

We have one up or one up and operating at Bethel Middle School in conjunction with community health care.

Bless the Harts coming in and getting a grant and spending their own money to set that up.

We have another one that's currently being constructed of Grant Propulsion High School to support all three schools in that area.

That's actually a result of Representative Dr. Kim Schrier funding.

And we have another one that'll occur in Spanish way middle school as a result of funding from the state.

So we're we're working toward that.

We also implemented a team actually a couple of years ago to help with that entire social emotional learning process, multi-tiered system of support.

So we have some people there to kind of do a triage based assessment of who may need help and try to figure out if the next level is all they need or if they really need to have full intervention.

So we're working on it.

Tom mentioned staffing, Josh, and I know there's a national teacher shortage.

How are you doing in Tacoma?

Do you have everybody you need for classrooms?

How you how are you looking?

Well, we're we're always fluid.

So enrollment will dictate a little bit of that as we get kids inside of school systems.

And so as we've talked about in the past, you know, we lost some kids across the state, across the nation.

And so we're excited.

We think that we're getting some indications with enrollment that some of those kids are coming back.

I think the stabilization of some of the COVID regulations is adding to that infrastructure across the state for immunizations, vaccinations.

And so we're we're cautiously optimistic.

Some of our support staff, whether it's educational support professionals, bus drivers, we're always recruiting, we're always hiring.

If you know someone, please check out our website.

We'd love to hire them.

And I think that's pretty common across Pierce County.

Yeah.

Don't want to belabor it, but running a full bus schedule.

Oh yeah.

Running full bus schedule.

Time.

You guys able to.

It's even more important probably in Bethel, right?

We transport an awful lot of kids and we have retooled what we're doing.

We've actually changed the way we identify kids who want to be transported to.

We're basically have to say, yes, we do want to be transported as opposed to assuming they want to be transported.

So we've reduced the total number of packages and also in the case of three or four areas affecting high school and middle school kids only who actually live fairly close to those schools, they all have to walk there or our kids who in those areas do walk to school and it's a safe walk zone.

It's just that we don't have enough to be able to transport like we used in the past.

But based on our projections and the number of new drivers and substitute drivers that we have, we should be able to transport all the kids that request transportation this next year, which will be a big change from last year, were the huge hits we took with drivers being out.

Yeah, another thing that I know weighs on both your minds, you know, and you know, the Vivaldi, Texas shooting was just absolutely horrible.

But I also know there's been a lot of time and attention spent on school security.

Anything new flowing out of this, Josh, with school security, have you had more enhancements?

Is this a continuing dialog?

Just give parents and grandparents a feel for what your district in the last time the same question are doing in terms of school security.

So were you safety and security as a combination in there?

And so it's one of our number one priorities there will never be enough efforts for us.

So it's something that we work on every day.

So there are a number of infrastructure upgrades, access, synthesize outdoors partnerships with the Tacoma Police Department to ensure that they have access to the doors, cameras, a number of different pieces.

And then we have a safety element of that, too, of with our whole child initiative, how are we having conversations, healing experiences?

There's a lot of traumatic events that happen outside the school system that come inside that impact our ability to keep kids safe and secure in there.

So there is never going to stop for us.

We're always going to be engaged in this conversation and the bond play a critical role, that it's not something that the state provides funding for that on a consistent basis.

And so there's a tension and a balance between so what does it mean to be safe and secure, which is very personal, and then making sure that there's equitable infrastructure across the system.

Tom, same question to you.

What things have you been able to implement briefly?

And then also a specific question.

A lot of these people identify themselves upstream as being problematic but aren't identified or ignored or blown off.

So talk a little bit about what's happening in your district and then maybe address the upstream piece.

Is there is there any additional effort being made to identify problem possible problematic actors through their social media posts or whatever?

Or does Bethel can Bethel have those kinds of resources?

Well, first of all, my journey in this area started when I was the superintendent of Boulder Valley in Colorado 25 years ago, 26 years ago.

And my school district was next to where Columbine High School massacre occurred.

So I've been taking those very seriously for a long period of time.

Our school district was one of the first in the county, if not the first, to actually install camera badging systems where you have to show who you are with an I.D.

before they'll let you come in the door.

And we've upgraded that, or we're putting a vestibule in where there's a second door.

Okay.

And the newer construction.

Airlock kind of deal.

Or.

Yeah, Air Force I call the man trap network, call it.

But the idea is, you know, if for some reason somebody gets in, there's one more layer of protection.

And so we looked at our buildings to make sure we had that layer protection throughout and make sure all doors lock so there's no excuse like, well, I have the door propped open with a stone so I could bring a box of cookies or whatever.

I mean, and the other thing is, while we were making the physical presence of the building as secure as we possibly can, it's the human element that really requires constant reminding.

I preach as a prerequisite to holding school.

There are three prerequisites health, safety and security.

And the security is the human to human thing.

So we try to re-emphasize that before you let somebody in, you really got to make sure who they are and you really have to stop what you're doing.

If you're the secretary at the desk and look and confirm you just automatically.

The other thing is you got to teach kids, I'm sorry.

That person out there may look like a really nice person, but you just can't let them in the side door.

So it's a process of reinforcing everybody, Hey, we want you to be safe.

And here are certain rules as far as being able to guess ahead of time who may be a problem.

I would I would like to think that some state or county or federal agency was doing that, but probably not.

I would have to go back to another thing I've fallen back on as a first line of defense.

Frankly, as far as defense from students from within the student population.

And that is there needs to be a recognition that really the best line of defense is for kids to feel that they can have a conversation with a trusted adult in a building.

And it could be the janitor, it could be the lunch lady, it could be the custodian or teacher or administrator and say, I'm really concerned about Johnny so-and-so.

He's acting weird.

Yeah.

He may hurt himself.

He may hurt somebody else.

I don't know.

I don't want to, you know, be a tattletale.

But building, you know, the culture so the.

Service culture of caring where it's okay for kids to come talk to an adult.

And matter of fact, I've told my school district that one of the first things going to do this year, coming off of two years of COVID and basically basically being isolated, is to take the time, reestablish the relationships, student to student, student to adult, and frankly, even adult to adult.

So we reestablish those bonds that really make us sort of the fabric of a school.

Speaking of bonds, Josh, and our last 60 seconds here, the bonds in school districts, it's always been very local, kind of a family setting, parents and coaches and teachers getting together, at least in our kind of idealized vision of it.

But, boy, divisive politics have really crept into schools.

And I don't know if Bethel or Tacoma has had any hot school board meetings.

So you can answer that if you want to.

But I want to ask you generally speaking, Josh, what do you think the formula is or the recipe or the prescription is for just taking down the temperature in the public schools?

When it comes to politics, how can you as a leader facilitate that?

Is it possible?

Well, that's on 60 seconds to go.

No, I think I just have build on some of Tom's comments.

As you know, culture is something that we have to always intentionally work at.

And it's where we talk a lot about it is we have the kids for a third of the time in the community, hasn't for two thirds of the time.

Doing intentional partnerships is really hard.

It's really hard work.

It's working with kids is really hard and so on.

Understanding that, understanding that it's developmental, understanding that we're trying to build shared values and norms.

I think it helps bring a realness to this.

You know, if you've ever raised kids, you realize that even kids in your own house have different needs, different in there.

So we try to bring a human element to the conversation.

We try to meet people where they are in that conversation.

We try to be fair and unbiased to when we make decisions.

So if they're health based decisions, we're going to follow the guidance of the health department.

We are not health specialists in there.

We we do an amazing job, an amazing support team in responding.

But we have to work with other agencies in that in order to build that trust.

We also recognize that that may not be the only option for some families for real reasons.

So we try to create other options in our portfolio, whether it's to come online, whether it's flexible options for kids, whether it's new, unique programs, recognizing that it's not a one size fits all.

And let's try to leave the blame outside when we're talking about kids and work towards a assabet solution based approach.

I like to end on that thought.

Let's try to leave the blame outside.

Thanks, both of you, for coming to Northwest now and giving us a feel for what's going on in their respective districts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My personal thanks to Chris, Josh and Tom, who I think are doing the best they can in tough times and are willing to talk about it here.

Public schools and the formerly robust higher education system have arguably been this nation's greatest strength.

If there is such a thing as American exceptionalism, public universal education is what fueled a sense of citizenship, a belief in our public institutions, a culture of innovation and personal responsibility.

And the academic excellence required to sustain it all.

The bottom line, like all institutions in this nation, educational institutions are now under siege, and we won't work our way out of it until we get the pressure groups out and recenter the voices of professional educators and well-educated, moderate and child, advocating parents.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the Web at KBTC-dot-org.

And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now, a downloadable podcast of this program is available under the Northwest Now tab at KBTC-dog-org and on iTunes now by searching northwest now.

That's going to do it for this edition of Northwest Now and Till Next Time.

I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.