Of the 5 Director positions for the Tahoma School District Board of Directors, 3 are up for contested elections in November. The District is divided into 5 Director Districts although voting for each director is district wide.
Tonight, Tuesday, October 24th, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, at Tahoma High Schools’ Performing Arts Center, the Maple Valley-Black Diamond Chamber of Commerce is hosting a candidates’ forum. This is open to the public to come and hear for themselves what local candidates, including School Board Director candidates, have to say.
Jennifer McMaster was just appointed to fill the vacancy for District 1 and will have to run for election at a later time. Michael Wiggins is the only person running for the District 2 position vacated by Katrina Montgomery, so this is an uncontested position.
Running for the District 3 position are Malia Hollowell and Stephen Deutschman. Hollowell was the incumbent. Although she recently resigned in protest, she is still on the ballot and eligible to return as a Board member if the voters so choose. Hollowell is a nationally certified teacher, author of “The Science of Reading in Action“, and CEO of Playdough to Plato. She received 53.69% of votes cast in the 2019 TSD Directors election. Deutschman is a long-term area resident, grandfather and community volunteer per his voter’s candidate statement and reported in his 2020 King Conservation District candidate statement that he took some community college coursework. He lost his 2020 attempt to be elected to the Board of Supervisors of the King Conservation District, receiving only 18.42% of the votes cast.
In District 4, incumbent and current Board President Pete Miller, CPA, first won election to this position in 2019 with 85.34% of the vote. His voter’s pamphlet statement refers to many successes in the Tahoma School District and the ongoing need to confront challenges with transparency and collaboration. He is opposed by Vincent Powell, a manager with an MBA, whose Linked-In page starts with, “Love God.” Powell’s website claims TSD’s “school board has not been transparent about our district’s underperformance” and claims in the TahomaValues.com questionnaire that TSD “is struggling academically in Math and Science.” The source of his claims seems to be the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which compiles and reports public data supplied by all Washington school districts, including Tahoma. See below.
The District 5 position contestants are incumbent Matt Carreon who is opposed by Patrick Peacock. Carreon was appointed to the Board in January to fill a vacancy. He is now an Aerospace and Defense executive with an MBA. He graduated from the US Naval Academy and formerly was a Naval Flight Officer. Did you watch Top Gun? He was Goose. His challenger, Patrick Peacock, a 6th generation Hobart resident, earned an MBA in Finance, serves in the Army Reserve and is a Senior Industrial Security Specialist, and has attended numerous TSD Board meetings. Peacock’s complaint about Carreon is his attendance record at Board meetings, but his on-line materials do not question the decisions Carreon has made as a School Board Director or the policies he has supported and do not discuss what impact, if any, Carreon’s schedule actually has on the School Board’s work.
Deutschman, POWELL and Peacock in their on-line postings communicate their beliefs that students in Tahoma School District are underperforming, alleging a near 40% do not meet grade level English standards. According to data posted on the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s website for the academic year 2022-23, washingtonstatereportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us TSD students are doing far better than the state-wide average: 68.0% of TSD students met English Language Arts standards, compared to 50.7% state-wide; in math, 58.4% of TSD students met standards vs. 39.1% state-wide; in science, the state-wide average is 42.9% but 57.8% of TSD students met standards. Is there room for improvement? Of course, and there always will be. But TSD objectively appears to be doing far better than the rest of Washington school districts teaching their students measured academics.
Both Tahomavalues.com and the TSD Discussion Group on Facebook have postings that allege at least two of the challengers are affiliated with or supported by Moms for Liberty. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Moms for Liberty is a far-right, anti-student inclusion group that supports book banning and opposes comprehensive health (including sex) education in public schools that SPLC classifies as an extremist group.
There are several websites where information about these Director candidates can be found:
Campaign websites and Facebook pages for the candidates have them
Facebook: TSD Discussion Group
King County Elections Voters’ pamphlet mailed to your home or on-line at kingcounty.gov
LinkedIn pages for each of the candidates
Public Disclosure Commission data filed by each candidate at pdc.wa.gov
Tahomaparents.org
Tahomasd.us/our_district/school_board
Tahomavalues.com [includes answers to questions posed to each candidate]
Jennifer C. Rydberg is a retired attorney, grandmother, and mother of two sons who attended Tahoma schools. She served a term on the Tahoma School District Board of Directors 1991-1995 including 1 year as its President. Active in ScoutingBSA, her husband was a local scoutmaster for 25 years; both received Silver Beaver Awards.
