‘Up for the challenge’: Appointed school board member wants to focus on children

MOSES LAKE — Alana DeGooyer didn’t expect to be named to the Moses Lake School Board in July.

“It’s kind of surprising that I got the call because I haven’t lived here for very long,” said DeGooyer, a 41-year-old married mother of six. “A couple of the other people that interviewed have lived here for a long time, they’re older, and their kids have gone through the school system.”

Still, DeGooyer said, she’s happy she was appointed to the board.

“It’s been really good,” she said. “And I’m up for the challenge.”

And it’s been a challenge. Since being appointed in July to fill the Moses Lake School Board seat vacated by Bryce McPartland, DeGooyer found herself attending a number of hastily called emergency school board meetings to examine financial questions involving former superintendent Josh Meek, which led to the board deciding to end Meek’s employment at the end of August.

DeGooyer, who is married to Samaritan Hospital sports medicine specialist Brett DeGooyer, didn’t address the matter of the former superintendent directly. However, she said she believes the board needs to be in the business of fostering trust with parents and residents and bettering the education of the district’s children.

“It always seems to be that the hot topics always take center stage with anything, with politics, with the school board, with the hospital, with our lives,” she said.

While she understands the “hot topics” of how race and gender are taught in the public schools aren’t going to go away, DeGooyer said she believes closing the gap between kids who aren’t doing well in schools and those who are is the most pressing matter facing the board.

“I think we do serve the community as a school board, but I feel like our main priority is the children,” DeGooyer said. “The kids should be the number one priority — their safety, confidence that they learn through school and the things that they are learning.”

DeGooyer said she doesn’t have any answers for closing that gap or dealing with state mandates on how race and gender are taught and handled in the public schools; however, she said she believes it’s important to listen and truly understand what’s happening before anything else.

“I think we need to truly understand what we are dealing with, and not just listen to all the voices that are giving opinions,” she said.

But she believes the school board can, and should, be transparent with teachers, staff, students and the public about what it does in its meetings, and the board needs to listen to residents and taxpayers to foster trust and a sense of unity.

“I think the trust will be built back with transparency, communication and honesty, and I feel like we need to foster as much as we can,” she said.

DeGooyer also said transparency and communication goes both ways. While taxpayers are entitled to know their money is spent wisely, she said they should make an effort to understand what board members are saying and doing and not hide behind screens or screeds delivered at a lectern during a public comment period, saying things “you would not say to someone’s face one-on-one.”

“That’s not serving the kids, and that’s not doing anyone any favors,” she said.

While DeGooyer admits she doesn’t know as much of the history leading to the current state of mistrust many district residents have of the school board and the MLSD, she believes trust can be rebuilt, and she hopes to help do just that.

“I feel like we all need to be mature, and realize the bottom line is we’re in this for the kids, for the future of our community, and if our purposes are aligned as much as they can be with that unity, good things can happen,” she said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.