Post-pandemic education chaos has rendered school board meetings across Clark County hotbeds of emotion. Students are more stressed than ever, and districts struggle to pay for services they never had to provide before.
As parents and staff voice their frustration week after week, attendees and board members alike are often left with more questions than answers. A group of Evergreen Public Schools parents-turned-activists is forming a nonprofit — the Parent Teacher Community Collective — to help parents better understand the challenges schools are facing and help them better engage with policymakers.
“We know that speaking in front of a policymaking body is nerve-racking and we want to help people know where to start,” said Camille Victoria, the group’s treasurer.
Next week, the League of Women Voters Clark County is partnering with the east Vancouver-based parent group to introduce several tools for parents interested in taking on a bigger role in speaking on behalf of their child. The virtual session will break parents into small groups to explore conflict resolution and communication techniques.
“We don’t think people have to be experts to testify and explain why they think something is important,” said Teresa Torres, the civics chairwoman for the League of Women Voters Clark County. “And you can use these tools in other ways, like a job interview or a business meeting.”
A year ago today, teachers in Evergreen Public Schools were on strike. Schools were closed, kids were antsy, and many parents had grown frustrated and confused.
Camille Victoria and Courtney Bisig were among those parents desperate to better understand how their children’s teachers appeared to be at such odds with the district’s administration. As the strike went on, Bisig formed a Facebook group of Evergreen parents to organize support for the Evergreen Education Association. Nearly 2,000 people joined the group, then called Evergreen Red for Ed, within 24 hours.
Only a few days later, the strike came to an end. The group’s momentum, however, continued. Throughout the 2023-2024 school year, Bisig and other group leaders became regular faces at district board meetings, voicing concerns about classroom staffing and advocating for Evergreen to keep its school librarians.
Yet, even though they were engaging with the school board and administration, they still felt frustrated, confused and disconnected.
“We had this Facebook group where everyone is asking these questions that we needed help with answering,” Bisig said. “ ‘How can we help? How can we support communities in other districts going through different but similar things?’ ”
As a member of the League of Women Voters Clark County’s corps of observers, Torres routinely watches Evergreen Public Schools board meetings.
“As I started watching, there’s a lot of pain and anguish going on. And I begin to realize there’s a group of parents that were really organizing and advocating,” Torres said.
She quickly tracked down another one of the group’s most vocal members, Angie Bunda, and explored a way to connect their groups. Torres said forming such a connection to help more parents get engaged in school board meetings and larger policy decisions is empowering, especially in an era of what she called “political malaise.”
Public meetings in Washington inherently have a cold format for community input, she said. Speakers are given three minutes to talk and aren’t offered any direct feedback from board members. That structure can often fuel a sense of frustration from parents who work up the courage to speak on often personal, emotional situations.
“I get it, but you get nothing, you get a wall,” Torres said. “I could see as a parent that would be really hard. Somebody who has a child in that district and is sending these messages or speaking at meetings and getting nothing back, that might hurt them.”
Torres figured even just working to educate parents better on what to expect in those meetings might help, she said. Changing the messaging to be organized and productive could help board members listen better, too.
Although Evergreen Interim Superintendent Christine Moloney is only a few months into her new job, she’s already had a chance to speak with Bisig, Victoria and other leaders at the parent collective.
A major priority for Evergreen in 2025 is passing a replacement operations levy to maintain staff positions, class offerings and student extracurricular activities that the state doesn’t fund.
In order for the levy to pass, districts have to convey why it’s important.
“There needs to be a more equitable way to explain the levy. The math behind it, where the money is going, where it comes from,” Victoria said. “We want to help people understand that if it fails, this is what happens.”
The last time Evergreen sought a replacement levy, it took two elections to pass. The first attempt in February 2022 asked voters to approve an increase in the district’s tax rate to bring more money into the district. After the failure, the second attempt in April 2022 returned the rate to its previous amount to ensure it passed.
Reviewing those actions was eye-opening, Victoria said. Had that first measure passed, the district might not have had to make as sizable a cut to its budget in 2023 and 2024.
“That’s an example right there, you know? Maybe if that first levy didn’t fail, that money could’ve been used to offset some of these budget cuts we’ve had to endure. Maybe there could still be librarians,” Victoria said.
The parent group hopes to explain these sorts of trade-offs to the community. Moloney said leaning on this group will likely be a critical part of the district’s plan to get out the word about its next levy attempt.
“When the board goes through the process of developing dollar amounts and creating flyers that make this as easy to understand as possible, it would be helpful to provide this stuff to (Parent Teacher Community Collective’s) networks,” she said. “We need to share information with our district’s key communicators.”
The virtual training session, titled “Speak Up School,” is 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 12. The event is free but spots are limited. Interested participants should sign up by emailing training leaders at speakupclarkcounty@gmail.com.