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Incumbent Chris Reykdal has officially won a third term as Washington’s superintendent of public instruction.
With about 160,000 votes outstanding statewide on Wednesday, Reykdal leads his challenger, David Olson, by nearly 205,000 votes.
Olson performed better than almost all Republican challengers in statewide executive races, garnering more than 46% of the vote. Only Republican state lands commissioner candidate Jaime Herrera Beutler earned a larger share of statewide votes for a Republican, with 47% overall. King County Council Chair Dave Upthegrove won the race for lands commissioner.
Olson, a Peninsula School District board member, told The Center Square he was disappointed with the outcome.
“The geographic majority of the state voted for me, but this pocket in King County [33.6% for Olson] continues to control how everyone else in the state has to live their lives,” Olson said, noting he was encouraged by the support he did receive.
“A million-and-a-half people in our state saying they are unhappy with the guy running our show is an indictment in my opinion,” he said. “I think we’re going to continue to lose a significant number of students in the coming years, either to home school, private school or leaving the state.”
As previously reported by The Center Square, enrollment in Washington public schools is down 4% since 2019.
“I ran to restore public trust in our public schools and to try and reassure parents that our public education is focused on educating kids versus pressing social and political ideologies,” Olson explained.
One of the most controversial issues facing public schools today concerns the changes made to Title IX under the Biden administration. The Biden final rule changes, which took effect in about half of U.S. states, extended federal protections for LGBTQ+ students in athletics and expanded sexual harassment protections, among other changes.
Legal challenges blocked more than half of all states from enforcing the updated regulations, but that was not the case in Washington.
Reykdal has also received pushback after telling school districts not to enforce the recently adopted Initiative 2081, the parents’ bill of rights allowing parents and guardians of public-school children to review instructional materials and inspect student records.
The measure was approved by lawmakers back in March after being introduced as a voter initiative.
Supporters said it was a way to ensure parents don’t feel left out of their children’s education.
Reykdal told the state’s 295 public school districts that federal law provides protections that I-2081 conflicts with.
“Some of these records contain personal information and are protected under the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and as such, cannot be disclosed without the student’s consent,” read a summer news release from Reykdal’s office.
Independent Women’s Forum senior attorney Beth Parlato told The Center Square Reykdal has no legal standing in the matter.
“He’s wrong, as there’s no federal law that says you can keep information about your students under age 18 from the parents,” Parlato said. “I can tell you as an attorney it doesn’t matter what he says because it’s law; it passed, and it passed by wide margins. He has no authority to tell anybody to violate the law.”
IWF has joined lawsuits in other states that successfully fought the Biden Title IX changes.
“We have a new administration come January 20th, and I can pretty much guarantee that’s going to be a high priority for the incoming administration, and Biden’s illegal rewrite will no longer be in place,” Parlato continued.
Part of Reykdal’s guidance to school districts when the Title IX changes took effect was to offer training for each school to appoint a Title IX coordinator to respond to any complaints or inquiries from students, staff or parents.
OSPI’s Office of Equity & Civil Rights was established to handle these issues.
The Center Square asked OSPI whether the Office of Equity & Civil Rights has had to respond to any issues so far this school year.
“The Equity & Civil Rights Office has been contacted by a handful of school districts with inquiries about the Title IX rule changes that took effect this summer,” OSPI spokesperson Katy Payne replied in an email. “The ECR team would not characterize these as complaints; rather, they have been questions about implementation, which is very common with any change in law.”
As reported by the Associated Press this week, the incoming Trump administration is expected to swiftly make changes, including one that could exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms.