As of the submission date of this article for publication, I have personally been on the doorsteps of 1,038 homes in Lakewood, pursuing elected office to serve on the Clover Park School Board.
Thanks to the help of others, we will have reached 5,000 homes by the date of the Primary Election, August 3.
My commitment to be seen and your voice heard is in keeping with my belief that a key responsibility of a school board director is to actively seek out opportunities to listen to the parents and grandparents, and listen to the teachers, who have the highest of privileges: how best to prepare their children for the future.
Since December 21, 2020, I have not missed a school board meeting, audio recording each meeting and writing now eight articles that can be found in this publication and on my website: Elect David Anderson | Clover Park School Board.
Reflection and research, to ascertain the facts and keep the public informed – in addition to reaching out – is also a key responsibility of a school board director. The research, recommendation, implementation and review for effectiveness of the best practices of schools and school districts across America is the central plank of my platform. We must prepare all students for postsecondary success, whether it is in a four-year college, community college, job training program, or the military. This is what I will bring to the school board.
If you believe, as I do, that a school board director is elected not to preside over the institution of education but rather pursue after outstanding excellence in education; if you believe, as I do, that your voice, not just your vote, is to be heard before, during, and after the election; if you believe, as I do, that preparing students to meet the challenges of life after high school is a moral imperative for our country and this city, then I humbly ask you to vote for me to serve you on the Clover Park School Board.
Thank you!
And if you would like to join the team, or have further questions of me, there is a comment form on my website: Elect David Anderson | Clover Park School Board.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
David, I am praying for your success. Thank you for running.
Thank you Dan for your prayer support! As a retired pastor, teacher of Good News Clubs, youth mentor, I appreciate this expression of yours!
David, It is very encouraging to see your dedication and diligence toward being elected. You have my vote as a much needed board member who will truly listen to parents and students regarding education in Clover Park Schools!! It is in those hearts and minds that we will find the way toward a more fundamental focus on education and a deeply balanced approach to the needs of individual students.
David, after reading the eight well-researched, reasonable articles you have published in the Suburban Times regarding education and the Clover Park School District (CPSD), which date back to December 2020, I have had several conversations with you about your candidacy for a CPSD Board of Directors position. I have also observed you in action. You are, indeed, totally committed in all your endeavors to learn about the Board’s Standard Operating Procedures and practices, as well as the district’s mission and results of educating our community’s children. You are firm in your convictions but also practice active listening, always with the goal of working with others toward the end goal of preparing all students to meet the challenges of life after high school graduation. Thank you for offering your service as a CPSD Board of Directors position for our community.
David,
I am proud of you and for that which you stand.
I am now sorry I no longer live in Lakewood so I could vote for you. After living in Lakewood for 51 years, I wonder if they would let me vote for you using an Absentee Ballot?
If they will let me, I can give new meaning to the concept, Absentee Ballot.
Joseph Boyle
Thank you for your kind remarks Joe! I wish you still lived here too, if only to see if people could tell us apart! 🙂
Joe! I missed reading why you left Washington! I have been waiting for your comments on Ed Troyer troubles! You had such a good article about not voting for him and so I didn’t and now look what he’s done!!
Ms Storaasli,
Thanks for your comments.
I left Washington for the folowing reasons:
(1) Traffic in Lakewood was beginning to remind me of Los Angeles.
(2) Five of my dear neighbors and I unfortunately had 3 mentals move into our area. Each of the 3 have the potential to land on the front page for being invoved with a homicide. One I will label a pyromaniac. A second family appears to be direct descendents of the devil himself. The 3rd is a self centered ego maniac trouble maker. Guns and explosives are involved with all 3. During my law enforcement career, I spent time with killers. I know a potential killer when I see one.
(3) Some say Pierce County is not big enough for Joe Boyle and the new sheriff in town.
(4) Lastly, I have family on the East Coast and since life is an adventure, after 77 years in Washington State, 51 years in Lakewood, and 43 years in our last home, we packed, sold out on the West Coast and bought on the East Coast all within 60 days.
Because I no longer live in Lakewood, I do not fit The Suburban Times criteria for writers. Thus I am not allowed to write my Westside Story any longer. It was a great 10 years working with my friend and publisher, Ben Sclair. During that time I wrote 700 Westside Story articles. Soon, I will be looking for a different venue for my future writing.
I have plenty I could write about related to the Pierce County Sheriff’s recent behavior and tactics, but I am choosing to let his actions speak for themselves.
I hope enough people are smart enough after the Sheriff Janovich and Sheriff Troyer incidents to return permanently to an appointed sheriff process. The voting system generates people voting based on name familiarity which is not an intelligent meaningful process.
Good luck to all of you I left in Pierce County;
Joseph Boyle
Thanks for the update! It will be interesting how Troyer will get out of this latest mess. The TNT carrier has now filed law suit and I hope he wins!
Sue Storaasli
I enjoyed your articles and opinions for years. I’ve several questions. What’s your understanding of critical race theory? Do you support critical race theory? What do you support? How do you want to effect change?
To make a point, I was educated in the CPSD from Lake Louise Elementary School to Mann Junior High School to Lakes High School. My exposure to US History was limited to the Caucasian perspective. In my late teens, US slavery was covered in an hour in my high school class at Lakes. I watched the miniseries Root in 1977 and felt betrayed by teachers. At Washington State University, in Afro-American studies courses, I discovered that Lincoln wanted to expatriate freed slaves. I didn’t learn that Andrew Johnson was considered the worst possible person to have served as President at the end of the American Civil War until I was in my thirties. I didn’t learn of Black Wall Street until I was in my fifties. I could go on; but, I’m sure you get my point.
How will you support balanced education in the CPSD district? How will you work with the current executive CPSD leadership to make sure that education isn’t just “white,” but just right and balanced for every person?
It’ll take a community, working together, to make a paradigm shift from nice white parents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html
Thank you, Ken, for reading what I’ve written over the years. Hopefully, you’ve found in my articles and opinions my attempt that these missives be researched-based.
Which brings me to your question that I believe encapsulates all the rest, the question that should only, and always, be forefront in all we do: “How do you want to effect change?”
That question matters most in whatever organization we find ourselves, let alone education.
My answer is the central plank of my platform which is on the front of my handbill (as of yesterday distributed personally by me to 1,358 doorsteps in Lakewood), to be found on my website and posted here in this publication: “I will bring to the board recommendations for best practices to be implemented and regularly reviewed for effectiveness.”
There are great schools in America (GreatSchools.org) – award-winning schools, high-performing schools, schools serving low-income students and excelling in doing so – that are recognized and applauded, and whose methodologies and structures and educational strategies are there to be examined – if not replicated – here in the Clover Park School District.
Whether a school board director, educator, parent, or teen looking to understand or improve the quality of our schools, there is no better, more promising place to start, than to have ever before us the only reason we are in business: what makes for an award-winning school, one that successfully prepares students to meet the challenges of life after high school.
I believe that if this one task does not occupy our thoughts, dominate our discussions, pervade our board proceedings, drive our curriculum decisions, then we will incrementally, imperceptibly find ourselves mired in mediocrity.
Like my fifth-grade mentee who with his six-inch paper ruler measured the sidewalk leading to the front door of Tillicum Elementary School. I was alongside him on my hands and knees also determining the length of the sidewalk. Unbeknownst to him, I had altered his ruler, shortening it contrasted to mine, by a mere three-eighths of an inch. That infinitesimal change however would over time and distance leave him far short of where he might have been.
So, what shall we say when we discover – if in fact we do discover upon honest reflection and introspection – that we have shortchanged, handicapped, cheated, and failed those for whom we have the privilege and the responsibility to ensure they excel at life: the children of the parents who’ve entrusted them to our care?
Does this answer your questions of me regarding Critical Race Theory?
I believe it does.
Any – any – methodology, ideology or theory must be – must be – measured against the objective reality that defines our purpose and reason-for-being as part of the educational process (teen, parent, educator, staff, or director): Is it true, which requires evidence that demands a verdict.
Education after all, should not be indoctrination. Education should not be aimed at political action. Education should not be agenda-driven.
I’ve written about this, here in this publication and found on my website, an article entitled “Is It Education Or Political Activism?”
Education should be about facts – supportable, quantifiable, identifiable facts.
The truth. Good, bad, or ugly.
Education should be about the individual student – that student not classified, categorized, and identified for ‘membership’ in a group imposed upon them by others.
Rather each individual student, possessed as they are with skills, gifts, talents and abilities, should be individually supported, encouraged, developed, and directed on a matching career pathway.
Education should be the best investment we make.
Education should not be, as Sydney Harris wrote in a December 1980 article entitled “Learning Cannot Come Easy”:
“Why is education the only activity upon which we are willing to spend so much and resigned to accept so little in return?”
Education is the most critical race in America.
Within my lifetime, I’ve experienced many skilled bureaucrats, lobbyists and politicians. I’m a simple man that doesn’t like to read between the lines because I make too many assumptions. I prefer to follow the simple adage, “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
I’ll do more research on your alliances to determine my support. Currently, as the third generation of Joneses cycle through the Clover Park School District, I’m more likely to support bureaucrats that want to address the inequalities and inequities in educational institutions and strive to effect change by supporting an educational curriculum that exposes the good, the bad and the ugly of American History.
Personally, I want a similar approach to the history of Afro-American slavery as the Germans apply to The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah.
Thank you David for undertaking this race for school board and towards the finish line for our children’s education. This is not a sprint but rather a marathon for this and generations of children to come upon which our Country’s future depends. Anything that detracts or distracts from that goal has no place in the educational system. Groups don’t enroll in school; individuals do and that’s where the emphasis belongs. Educating each individual child to prepare them as young adults after high school.