We’re heartened that a group of Islanders has worked long and hard to bring a Vashon Island schools foundation to fruition. And we know it has much to do with Superintendent Michael Soltman’s strong and energetic leadership.
In just over a year, he’s found a way to close a large budget gap, stave off several layoffs, bring in a new, nutritious lunch program and address myriad parental concerns about class sizes, academic programs and after-school activities.
His efforts have inspired a number of Island parents, including those who are sometimes put off by the bureaucracy public education can breed, to get involved. The new foundation, helmed by a handful of business-savvy Islanders, is evidence of Soltman’s ability to instill confidence in the district.
At the same time, we need to note that this trend — a proliferation of foundations to fill in where the public funding system fails — is a sad sign of the nation’s current state of affairs. In Washington, as in other parts of the country, we’re increasingly growing a Balkanized public education system, where there are rich districts and poor ones, those that can offer much and those that limp along.
It’s hard to imagine students in Pacific County, Pend Oreille County or some of the other far reaches of the state attending new advanced placement courses due to the philanthropic support of their local residents.
Universal education has long been the cornerstone of democracy — a radical concept, in some ways, that has profoundly altered our nation’s landscape over the years. Foundations that enable communities to take care of their own without consideration of this bigger, political reality move us farther from this powerful, shared ideal.
The good news is that as a schools foundation takes on the heavy-lifting of fundraising, it frees our PTSA to take on another important role — that of advocating for better statewide funding of education.
Lauri Hennessey, Vashon’s PTSA president, said that such advocacy — at a local, district-wide level, as well as at a larger, statewide level — has long been PTSA’s claim to fame. But in recent years, Vashon’s PTSA, like those in other school districts, has stepped in to help support our financially ailing district. It has done so ably. PTSA members — many of them volunteers with day jobs — have worked hard to put on an annual auction and take on other fundraising efforts because they care deeply about their chilren’s education.
The PTSA will likely continue to fundraise; according to Hennessey, parents want to again put on an auction. But we hope that as some of that fundraising burden is taken off of the PTSA, it can become an increasingly strong voice for another crying need — legislative reforms that will help to ensure that all children in the state obtain a decent public education.
Such an arrangement — a strong foundation, complemented by a strong and active PTSA — seems like the perfect scenario for Vashon, a place that cares not only about its own kids but also about the health and well-being of those in other corners of the state.
