North Thurston school board chooses new member. Here’s who she is and what she said
The North Thurston Public Schools board has a new member.
The school board voted 3-1 Tuesday to name Sarah Tracy the new director of District 3, which covers east Thurston County and includes Salish Middle School and River Ridge High School.
Tracy, 50, who is set to join the board on Sept. 3, replaces Jennifer Thomas who resigned last month.
Voting in favor of Tracy were Gretchen Maliska, Esperanza Badillo-Diiorio and Michelle Gipson. Board member Tiffany Sevruk voted against Tracy.
Two people applied for the position: Tracy and Loretta Byrnes, who ran for state representative as a Republican in the 22nd Legislative District in 2022.
Both applicants were interviewed at Tuesday’s board meeting. They each were asked the same five questions and then the board deliberated in closed session for about an hour before emerging to announce their decision.
Here is how Tracy replied to their questions. The responses are edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about yourself and what motivated you to apply for the position?
I’ve had a connection with North Thurston Public Schools for almost 45 years now. I’m a K-12 graduate. I went to Lakes, Nisqually and Timberline. My mom taught in the district for 25 years, and then both of my children attended from early elementary through high school graduation. Being involved in the schools is a part of who I am, and now that both of my children have graduated, I want to work to ensure success for all of our 14,000-plus students. I’m really proud of our district, and I think we can all acknowledge there’s more work to do, and I want to see the district continue to grow and improve, and I’m really excited for this opportunity to help guide that process.
Describe how your experience, training and interest can contribute to the mission of the district.
First off, throughout my children’s education, as I mentioned, it’s been very important to me to be involved and to be supportive, including countless volunteer hours in classrooms. In addition to that, I’ve worked as a pharmacist for 25 years, so my scientific background has really honed my analytical skills and allows me to effectively analyze data, as well as evaluating sources of data and rigor.
And then more recently, I’ve been working as a parent coach and working with families individually, as well as providing parent education for our district, including partnering with Salish Middle School to do education on cell phones and social media, which I think is a really important topic these days. It has allowed me to further connect with families and help support raising children because I think we have important work at the schools, and there’s also important work at home.
What do you feel are the biggest challenges for today’s students and how can we best prepare them for the future?
I think there’s a lot of challenges that our students face today. It’s hard to continue to talk about the pandemic, but I think the learning loss that we’ve seen from the pandemic continues to show in some of the benchmark scores, as well as just the social effect and the isolation, and I think that isolation is compounded then by cell phones and social media and this kind of surface-level interconnection. So continuing to support our students through teacher support, as well as curriculum on digital safety and digital wellness, to help students learn. Critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving and accountability, and help them to gain confidence and continue to connect and feel engaged in their education, connected to their school community and their community at large.
Tell us how you would weigh public community feedback in your role as a board director, including how you would weigh this against other sources of information.
As far as public feedback is concerned, I think one of the things that’s really important is to listen with an open heart and an open mind and consider the perspective of whoever is delivering the feedback, the perspective of where they’re coming from, because each of our experiences really influences our perspective on things. I also think that needs to be balanced with data, with other perspectives, as well as, you know, other experiences.
Is there anything else you think is important to share with us?
Probably just that we’re in a really charged environment, right? We see that in our political system. I think we’re also seeing it at the school district level now, and we need to continue to have creative problem solvers and people who can hear and evaluate perspectives from multiple different arenas, and I feel that I have the skill set to do that. The areas that I’m lacking I’m really eager to learn, and I would really be honored to serve our district as a school board director.
This story was originally published August 14, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
