Editor,
The special levy is intended to keep the Yelm Community Schools (YCS) operating the same way it has been: failing!
Over the last 10 years, on average, YCS has failed to get about 80% of its students to at least a minimum level of proficiency each and every year. Last year it failed 77% of its students.
Teacher salaries, however, have done quite well with Yelm teachers making an average (2023-24) of just over $100,000 per 180-day work year (and as high as $157,000 per 180-day work year) eclipsing the average salaries of teachers worldwide and throughout most of the United States … and getting less than average results.
Why? Because there is no accountability. Teacher salary is dependent on the teacher’s certifications, not their students’ performance/demonstrated proficiency. As a result, I have personally tutored average and better high school students in algebra who can’t tell you what seven times six is! Anecdotally, somewhere around 40% of Yelm’s high school students will not know their times table … a third grade requisite math proficiency! My take? We can thank the teachers union(s) (Google History of NCLB in WA).
Now we have well-intentioned (as well as “interested” parties) siding with the union to advocate for maintaining this disastrous status quo. If history is an indicator, blame for the failure will be put on parents, COVID-19, student apathy, school funding, test complexity and “lions and tigers and bears … ‘Oh my.” Unexplained by these advocates is why 38 other countries and about half the United States is doing better, not to mention spending far less.
I support an accountable public educational system. I vehemently oppose an unaccountable one. Because public K-12 is a closed system, the only way average parents and citizens have of demanding change is via the purse. Vote for our students; demand a change to accountability. Vote no on the special levy.
M. Douglas Martin
Thurston County
