School board candidates talk funding, overcrowding

MOSES LAKE — The four candidates vying to spend the next four years on the Moses Lake School Board answered questions and talked about their vision for the district’s schools at a candidate forum on Wednesday night.

Incumbent board member and president Kevin Donovan was joined by challenger Elliott Goodrich. They, along with board member Oscar Ochoa, answered questions from moderator Alan Heroux about overcrowding, standardized testing, and wise stewardship of the district’s finances. Candidate Vickey Melcher, who is running against Ochoa, also fielded questions.

“No, we are not very good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” said Elliot Goodrich, a specialty seed grower and farming consultant.

“Instructional costs have had a 15 percent rise per hour in the last two years,” Goodrich said. “When the rate of spending outpaces growth, that’s not sustainable.”

Donovan said the district has done a very good job of shepherding its resources, putting enough away to be able to pay salaries and bills for a month in the event the state’s budget is passed later than it should be.

“We are good stewards. We made it a goal to keep one-twelfth of our budget in the bank,” Donovan said. “We got a $3 million tax reduction from Grant County and we were able to tighten our belts, and we are under budget on all our projects.”

Goodrich said he believes the district should focus more on younger students, where attention will make more of a difference, noting that when he taught accounting in college, his classes frequently had as many as 150 students. Goodrich also suggested moving ninth-graders back to the junior high schools in order to deal with high school overcrowding.

“Twenty kids might be too much for an elementary school class,” Goodrich said. “Your classroom is overcrowded when your students can’t be successful.”

Goodrich was also critical of the Moses Lake School District’s graduation rate, which at 82 percent puts it square in the middle of the state’s 766 high schools. The rate was unacceptable for a school as large as Moses Lake.

“What can we do? We make school important by making it a place where they can be successful. Help them figure out what they can be good at,” Goodrich said.

Donovan said the district is doing all it can to keep kids in school.

“Two thousand kids in a school designed for 1,600 is insanely crowded,” said Donovan, who has served eight years on the school board. “It’s easy to feel lost. How do you make yourself feel known?”

While no one addressed the matter of last February’s $135 million school construction bond — which is sitting before a panel of appellate court justices after a group of Moses Lake voters challenged the validity of the election — Melcher, a retired teacher, said it was important to bring the community together.

“My priorities are to help reunite the community,” Melcher said. “We cannot accomplish a lot without the help of the community.”

Ochoa, who has served four years on the board, said he ran for school board because he loves Moses Lake and loves the opportunity he and his family have been given here in the Columbia Basin.

“I’m excited about the opportunity of another four years,” Ochoa said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.