We Must Speak Up for Our Students

The past few years have been tough, confusing, isolating. In a word? Uncertain.

Remember when we were told not to wear masks? Now, it’s mask up, vax up, or get out. 

Unfortunately, our children have been subjected to a mix of mandates, shifting timelines and goalposts, and a total upheaval of the educational experience as they once knew it.

Schools have been shut down and reopened. Students have been forced to switch between online and in-person instruction, sometimes within the same week! They’ve been told to stay outdoors—even when it’s cold, and to stay away from their classmates and friends. The only constant that remains is we’re still operating in a state of uncertainty as new science, or guidelines, or political markers emerge. 

It seems that there is no end in sight to these ever-changing metrics, and it is unconscionable for us to close our schools and put the mental health, emotional development, and physical well-being of our children at risk without scientific rationale.

I have met with teachers, students, and parents to hear what their concerns are. The number one takeaway I have from those conversations? We must provide certainty for our next generation. The alternative is a generation that will be ill-equipped to lead our society in the future. We owe them better.

Now, much of local school policy is managed at the state, or local level—as it should be. But federal policy and politics have influenced much of the impacts we’re seeing in our communities. Democrat governors across the country—including our own Governor Inslee—have been using the federal mandates and orders to justify their own actions and impose similar, state-level mandates. And because of these actions, our students are suffering.

In Central Washington and across the state, students’ exam scores have dropped significantly. Even more concerning are the tens of thousands that have disappeared from the classroom altogether over the course of the pandemic. 

That is why I have been working on legislation to provide certainty for our parents, our teachers, and most importantly, our children. My hope is to set a precedent, and spur similar action at the state and local levels.

Most of the legislation I’ve been working on has to do with school choice. All families should have the choice to receive quality instruction regardless of income, zip code, or personal belief. Ensuring that parents can provide quality education for their children in a way that respects both the families and the school choices they may make is a top priority of mine. Rather than funding systems, let’s start funding students and equipping families to make their own choices.

Two of my bills, the Masks Off Act and the Open Schools Act, provide grants to parents to be able to pay tuition at another school or cover homeschooling costs if their current school district has a mask mandate in place or is closed to in-person learning for COVID-related reasons, respectively.

I also support the Parents Bill of Rights Act which ensures that parents have the right to know what their children are being taught.

Most recently, I introduced the School Resource Officer Act, which provides additional funding to school resource officers to ensure our students in the classroom have a safe and secure learning environment.

I firmly believe that our educators should be consistently reevaluating circumstances in their communities—and taking feedback from parents in their communities—so that we can get back to the business of educating America's children through normal, in-person classroom instruction as soon as possible.

While I am committed to working to support Central Washington families and students, ultimately, decisions about our schools and our educational system should be made at the local level. It is the parents of our students who know how to best meet the educational and health needs of their children, not some federal official in D.C.

Returning our students to the classroom where they belong and providing a sense of normalcy during these formative years is long overdue. They are the leaders of the next generation and they have already been deprived of far too many of the opportunities for growth they should have been afforded. So, I urge all Central Washington parents to speak up, speak out, and advocate for your children like the future of our nation depends on it, because it does.