Several Spokane County school districts have multiple openings this election season for their school boards. The largest district, Spokane, has only one. The board’s chairman, Mike Wiser, faces a challenge from Ericka Lalka, the director of a local real estate franchise.
Mike Wiser’s day job is as a community health consultant. But when his two daughters were younger, he was also a stay-at-home dad and volunteered in their schools.
That experience led him to apply in 2017 for an open seat on the Spokane school board. He was picked to serve on a temporary basis, then won an election later that year for a full six-year term.
Now Wiser is running on his record. He has served during a period when the district opened three new middle schools to accommodate its decision to move sixth graders from elementary to middle school.
“If you’ve seen any of our new middle schools, it just feels really open and you can see into, oh, what’s going on in the library? What’s going on with the band? Not only does that increase safety, but it also allows students to see what kind of opportunities might exist in other classrooms," he said.
Wiser says he is satisfied with the current safety level of the district’s schools, especially those new facilities. He doesn’t support posting armed officers in schools.
Wiser was a member of the committee that developed the district’s transportation plan. The district has a new transportation partner, Zum. But fewer students are riding yellow school buses, more are riding Spokane Transit buses. More students are walking longer distances to school, up to a mile-and-a-half for those in high school. Some have complained about that and Wiser agrees that’s probably too far and should be adjusted. But he says the new plan is popular with parents and has proven to be more effective.
“The start of the school year has had fewer buses that have been late and missed pickups and stuff like that. Zum does their own surveys of parents and those results this year are looking quite good," he said.
If re-elected, Wiser says he looks forward to working with school officials to implement the new middle school model that incorporates sixth graders. And he’s eager to spend the next year learning more about a potential new school calendar.
“Sometimes people call it year-round school, but that’s not what I’m talking about," he said.
Wiser says the calendar would likely be similar to what the Freeman School District has adopted: a shorter summer vacation with more frequent breaks during the year.
“As we’ve seen, the stress levels for students and teachers coming out of the pandemic, having those extra breaks, I think, would be really impactful. But what they can also be is opportunities," he said.
"Say you have a two-week spring break instead of a one-week spring break, one of those weeks could be what they call intercessions, where students, instead of parents having to figure out child care for an extra week a year, you can go back to the school and experience some extracurricular activities, some enrichment, or remediation and reinforcement of something where a student is not up to standards to get extra support,” he said.
Wiser is challenged by Ericka Lalka. Lalka has had a long career in real estate in the Tri-Cities and now in Spokane. She is the CEO of the Keller Williams office here. Lalka says working in that industry has allowed her to play an important role in educating her four children.
“I have always been that house where the kids come to our house and hang out. Having the flexibility of the role that I had, I loved that. I loved to be home when my kids got home. I loved to be able to be that parent that could help out the other parents," she said.
"Since coming to Spokane, it’s just been such a different experience. I decided that it was an opportunity for me to take the culmination of my experience and, candidly, my expertise in running companies to provide some of my most valuable asset, which is time, to the board," she said.
Lalka says she would bring an interest in the school district’s finances and a willingness to ask tough questions about how money is spent. She believes the district needs to be more transparent in its budgeting.
“I do believe in the power of what money can do. It’s not that I have a love of money, but I do love that money can make things change and so when you think about the fact that we’re investing nearly 45% of our taxpayer dollars into the school system, then I think that every single entity that takes my money should be highly accountable and transparent to what they’re doing with it," she said.
Lalka believes the district needs to get back to putting more dollars into basic education and supporting teachers.
She’s also less than satisfied with the district’s approach to safety, particularly the way it communicates with parents about safety threats.
“In the last 30 days of her school that she attended last year, there were three to four times that they were put on lockdown and I received a text from my child that no parent wants to receive," she said. "That was basically like, ‘I don’t know if you heard, Mom, but we’re on lockdown and I wanted to let you know I’m safe.’ And I didn’t recognize the phone number because our child doesn’t have technology. I tried to respond. You can imagine, even in this moment I can remember the panic that I felt. And I didn’t receive an email from the school until nearly 20 minutes after that event. That happened several times.”
Lalka says she doesn’t support arming teachers in classrooms, but she would defer to law enforcement when considering questions about school security.
As of October 19, Lalka had raised about $6,000 for her campaign and spent more than $13,000. Wiser had raised about $4,000 and spent nearly $700.
