Tacoma School Board race offers vastly different choices. Here’s a look at the candidates
The lone contested Tacoma School Board race this election features an incumbent versus a newcomer who hold fundamentally different views on the role of social values in the education system.
Board president Elizabeth Bonbright, who’s seeking her first full six-year term after being appointed in 2019 and reelected two years ago to finish that unexpired term, has embraced building a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism.
For Bonbright, equity is a focus in a district where 65% of the population are students of color, 62% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, 15% are enrolled in special education and 11% are English-language learners, according to her campaign website.
“I firmly believe that racial justice, economic justice, social justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked and must be addressed with a holistic approach,” the website reads. “As a Tacoma School Board member, I am laser-focused on undoing institutional racism within our district and building an equitable, nurturing, empowering academic and social environment for all our students and staff.”
Her challenger, Brian’na Wolk, a software engineer, has expressed the desire to reemphasize merit and achievement and criticized “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) as being weaponized phrases that distract from student readiness. Wolk identifies as transgender.
Real-world results are needed, according to Wolk, to better prepare students to compete in a global job market and navigate threats to jobs from automation and artificial intelligence.
“I think that there’s a strong ideological bent on the school board right now and I don’t think it represents the majority of students or families and their ideas,” Wolk told The News Tribune’s editorial board in June.
During that same joint interview, Bonbright called DEI “a huge topic” and noted that students must be kept safe amid biases and discrimination against special needs, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Attention on mental health, youth violence
If reelected, Bonbright, 66, has highlighted key issues to take on over the next six years: Expanding early childhood education, increasing graduation rates for children of color and improving career opportunities for students entering college or into a trade, among them, according to her campaign website.
The likely top priority, she has said, is continuing to address two subjects often linked together: student mental health and youth violence.
“This has been a tough three years and youth violence in our community is a representation of, that we as a community are not doing everything we can to help our students,” she told The News Tribune’s editorial board in June.
In an interview Monday, Bonbright expanded on progress that has been made on that front, including a nighttime safe-place program for students set up this summer. It was driven by a harrowing figure: In January, 10 district students were impacted by gun violence as either the killed or wounded victim or the alleged perpetrator, according to Bonbright.
“This has got to stop,” she said.
Summer Late Nights, the program put on with district partners, provided roughly a dozen sites each for middle school and high school students to get dinner, hang out and engage in gym, art and music activities from 5-10 p.m. on weeknights. While she noted that she couldn’t say the relationship was causal, Bonbright said she wasn’t aware of any incidents of gun violence this summer involving a district student.
For more than a decade, another district program — the Whole Child initiative — has broadly afforded students opportunities to express their emotions and tasked educators with checking in on student mental and emotional well-being.
The program was highlighted last year in a Newsweek article as an example of one district bucking upward trends of youth depression and anxiety across the United States. Bonbright said the initiative ensures that “every single student feels heard and seen,” is greeted each day with a warm welcome and enters class as a ready learner.
“It’s my commitment and my passion for ensuring every student in (the district) has access to education that meets their needs and will help them become the best person that they can be,” she said.
Student safety was also the top priority of Wolk’s campaign, and Wolk planned to boost school security measures and address child predation risks, according to the state’s voter’s guide.
Counter to board ideology
While the Tacoma Public Schools Board of Directors is a non-partisan body, Wolk, 35, has made it clear in interviews and campaign materials that challenging Bonbright for the board’s Position 5 seat was an opportunity to counter the prevailing left-leaning ideology that Wolk believes dominates the current board.
In an interview Monday, Wolk said that the contest was about accountability, putting parents back in the driver’s seat and being unafraid to be a contrasting voice to so-called establishment views.
Wolk rebuked the district’s pivot to remote learning during the “mass hysteria” pandemic, downplayed children’s risk of catching COVID-19 and said that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies were too subjective and exclusionary of straight, white men.
Wolk, who was born a white man, identified as a “trans lesbian two-spirit indigenous woman of color” in an online posting and preferred she/her pronouns for this story. Wolk said she’s been undeterred by those who have accused her of being disingenuous, despite noting that if given the opportunity to create an identity that could move her into a marginalized group, “Why wouldn’t I do that?”
“Be who you want to be,” Wolk said, adding that it was a process, including therapy, that led to her realization of her identity. “If they say I can do it, I can do it.”
In July, Senate Bill 5599 went into effect, protecting minors seeking gender-affirming treatment from estranged parents’ intervention, according to the Associated Press. Wolk was opposed to the bill and collected signatures for a failed referendum to reject it, calling the legislation “a predatory bill that poses a threat to our values,” according to Wolk’s campaign website.
A non-campaign website, which Wolk acknowledged belonged to her, said that Wolk was “a proud member” of the LGBTQ+ community who stood for self-affirmation “without the need for potentially harmful medical interventions.”
Like Bonbright, Wolk supported improving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs. Wolk said that students should become literate in computer coding as soon as possible.
In the state’s voter’s guide, Wolk vowed to modernize the district “with a transformative vision rooted in technology, education, and real-world experience.” Wolk pledged to advocate for parents to get real-time access to student curriculum, assessments and progress reports and to oppose any policy that would weaken parental involvement in their child’s education.
Wolk has also questioned the status of the district’s touted 90% graduation rate when proficiency lagged behind. Forty-three percent of students in English Language Arts, 28% in math and 34% in science met grade level standards during the spring, according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s report card.
“Putting out students that aren’t capable of succeeding is not going to help them,” Wolk said during the editorial board interview this summer.
In that same interview, Bonbright said the district was grappling with different challenges than other schools, with the majority of the district being a minority population, although those challenges weren’t an excuse. Several schools don’t have parent teacher associations because parents are working multiple jobs and don’t have time to participate, she added.
“We are doing everything we can with the resources that we have,” she said, including partnering with other organizations to bring after-school programs to elementary and middle schools since the pandemic.
Tutoring is offered and parents don’t have to pay if they can’t afford it.
Experience versus an ‘outsider’
Wolk, a self-described “outsider with no political connections,” entered the race, in part, so that the incumbent wouldn’t run unopposed, according to Wolk’s campaign website.
Wolk acknowledged lacking experience and said she didn’t want to “grift” for money but hoped to garner support from a contingent of voters that were “fed up” with the board.
“I want them to keep their money,” Wolk said. “I’m trying to break through in my own way and just bypass all of that.”
On Monday, Wolk also addressed a criminal conviction from 2016.
In 2017, Wolk pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree assault, harassment and malicious mischief related to a domestic violence incident from the year prior, court records show, in which Wolk struck her father’s vehicle multiple times with an axe and — after her father came outside with a baseball bat — pointed a handgun at her father and threatened to shoot him, according to the charging document.
Wolk wasn’t ordered to serve any jail time due to a suspended sentence but was instead ordered to pay $700 in fees, stay away from her father, undergo a mental health evaluation and treatment — with anger management if recommended — and give up any firearms, court records show.
“I don’t want that to represent who I am,” Wolk said in an interview, adding that it was an “extreme situation.” “I believe that I’m reformed, I believe that I’ve served all the terms of my sentence and I’m still trying to make things right today.”
Bonbright built a career in child care, has lengthy experience in education and holds high-profile endorsements. She is also the only of the two candidates to have raised any money.
“I’m a policy wonk, and I think that’s very consistent with what the role is as a board member,” Bonbright said in an interview Monday, noting that she also has been involved in policy implementation.
Bonbright’s announced endorsements include Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, Pierce County Council Chairman Ryan Mello and her four other peers on the five-member school board. She’s reported more than $7,300 in campaign contributions in the race, according to filings with the state’s Public Disclosure Commission.
The general election is Nov. 7.
