Incumbent in Central Valley School Board election faces former conservative ally, retired teacher in sole county school board primary

In the lone school board primary in Spokane County, the race includes the incumbent, her former ally and a retired teacher looking to promote compromise in an increasingly divisive political atmosphere.

With one term under her belt, incumbent Pam Orebaugh hopes to keep her seat on the board for another four years and continue work she said has bettered the transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility from the school district, working in a role she sees as the “bridge between the district and the community.”

Challenger Rob Linebarger, also the chair of the Spokane County Republican Party, said he was compelled to throw his hat into the ring after seeing his wife struggle with a lack of autonomy while teaching in Central Valley. He vows to “make education great again” if elected, including his first act to “DOGE the district building,” rooting out administrators whose salaries, he said, waste taxpayers’ money.

Linebarger ran against Orebaugh four years ago but endorsed Orebaugh before the November election, helping her defeat a write-in bid from a retired teacher. Recent drawn-out legal proceedings against the school district that he says cost him around $250,000 are also fueling his campaign.

A recently retired Spokane Valley Tech teacher of career and technical education, Mark Bitz, misses direct interaction with schools and sees the position as a way to get back to it. He touts extensive experience working at Hewlett-Packard in various roles that he said make him a good mediator in divisive topics, eager to facilitate compromise between administration, students and staff and other government entities if elected.

The Spokane County Republican Party endorsed both Rob Linebarger and Pam Orebaugh for the seat.

Here’s how the candidates compare on some topics facing the school board.

Clashes between the state and federal government

In issues in which the state and federal government offer contradictory directives, such as recent clashes on civil rights laws and Title IX protections between the two entities, candidates differed in how they would proceed if they sat on the board.

In May, the Central Valley School Board sent a complaint to the federal government after the state authority on public schools, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal, said districts would violate civil right laws if they followed executive orders barring trans girls from girls schools sports. At the time of the complaint, the federal government already was investigating Reykdal’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Orebaugh was satisfied with the way her board approached the issue, sending the complaint and earlier passing a resolution in favor of proposed amendments to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association that would have limited the girls category to those assigned female at birth and created an open, ungendered category in school sports. The Central Valley board passed the resolution too late to be added to the amendments as official “supporting schools,” like Mead School District.

“We just need to stand up for girls sports, fair and equitable girls sports, and that’s not anti-anything,” Orebaugh said.

Linebarger said he would have gone further than the Central Valley board did at the time, forming a “coalition” of Spokane County school districts to defy the state as a unit and “just say no” to trans girls in girls sports. If Reykdal withheld funding, which is in his authority as state superintendent, the coalition would take the issue to the state courts and appeal to federal courts.

“I think we have to change the paradigm, we have to change the approach, and we have to federalize this issue and get it resolved once and for all,” he said.

Bitz would not have taken the issue as far, he said. As the state provides around 78% of the school district’s budget, he wouldn’t risk cuts to state funding by defying state law.

“I think setting up an adversarial relationship with the people who fund us may not be the best idea, it’s what they did,” Bitz said. “I don’t know that I would have done that.”

He said the proper avenue would have been to lobby lawmakers and tell OSPI their community’s position on the matter of trans athletes in sports.

Transgender athletes’ participation in school sports

Bitz said as a board member, his opinions on trans athletes’ participation don’t matter and he would listen to his constituents and students and reflect their values. He said he isn’t sure that the topic was worth bringing up at a school board level, mentioning the public comment from a few students advocating for their transgender friends in the school district.

“When the students spoke, they felt disenfranchised, they felt attacked,” Bitz said. “Was it worth bringing up? That’s the question. And I think that’s the question the board needed to ask, rather than just follow the script.”

Orebaugh has been outspoken in her position to “protect girls sports,” and sided against trans girls playing in girls sports at each turn it’s brought to the school board. She said her intent was never to target trans students, but stand up for cisgender girl athletes who think the best they can do is second place when competing with a trans athlete.

“It breaks my heart that some of the things we were accused of in public comment. That’s not our intent here; our intent is not against our students,” Orebaugh said.

Linebarger said he supports barring trans girls from girls sports, saying the interests of the estimated five to 10 trans student-athletes statewide, according to the WIAA, out of the 250,000 total in the state, shouldn’t outweigh the interests of the majority cisgender girl athletes.

“I think it’s a social issue, I think it’s a moral issue, I think it’s a safety issue … No boys in girls sports,” Linebarger said.

Pandemic-era recall attempt

Still haunting the election four years later is a recall attempt on three then-board members over enforcement of state mask and vaccine directives in schools, something that Orebaugh and Linebarger took issue with at the time.

Linebarger filed a failed recall attempt of Cindy McMullen, Keith Clark and Debbie Long on the Central Valley School Board. The former still sits on the board, the latter two lost re-election bids in 2023. In drawn-out legal proceedings, a Spokane County Superior Court judge sanctioned Linebarger fines to the tune of $22,500 for the “improper” outster, deemed bullying in nature, according to court documents from the time. Linebarger said the full cost to him, including attorney’s fees, was around $250,000.

Linebarger contends that the recall had the full support of Orebaugh, who was at the time running for a position on the board, though not against McMullen, Clark or Long.

“Pam was rolled up in it … and she’s denied it, and when it came time to cough up the money, she never paid a cent, she left it all on me,” Linebarger said. “So that’s fine. That goes to the integrity of the individual, in my opinion.”

Orebaugh said she wasn’t involved in the recall attempt outside of meeting Linebarger to file the recall and posing for a picture with him, holding the recall petition. She said his campaign is “retaliatory,” motivated largely by the recall attempt and his sanctions.

“He wants to tear the district down, and that’s what the public needs to know, then they can make a decision,” Orebaugh said. “Fine, do you want Central Valley torn down? Then Rob’s your guy.”

If elected, Linebarger said he would push for a board resolution advocating for citizens’ ability to file recall suits or complain to the school board, saying his sanctions had a chilling effect limiting anyone else from similar actions.

“When I get in there, we’ll have a policy that says parents’ rights are paramount,” Linebarger said. “If parents disagree with us, they have the right to write us an email, and we don’t have the right to object to it or get offended by it.”

Bitz, while not involved in the recall attempt, said he’s familiar with the issue and questioned if it was worth the money the district spent in the legal proceedings. As of 2023, the district spent around $175,000 in attorney’s fees.

“I’m gonna touch on one thing: fiscal responsibility. How much did that cost the district? That’s all I’m gonna say,” Bitz said. “Adversarial relationships are not productive. They don’t use your tax money well, they don’t educate students.”

Tax measures

Each candidate stressed a fiscal responsibility for which they said they would approach property tax collections under future potential levies and bonds. On a three-year levy cycle, the district likely will seek a renewal on its educational programs and operations levy in 2027. This levy generates property taxes at a rate of $1.91 per thousand in assessed property value, constituting around 14% of the school district’s revenue that pays for extracurriculars, more staff, safety features and everything beyond that state’s definition of “basic education.”

School boards decide how much to collect in property taxes, sending the requests to ballots for voters in the district to weigh in.

Bitz sees a need for this levy to maintain school operations, as well as a separate levy that pays for smaller construction projects in the district that collects at a rate of 39 cents per $1,000 of property value. He advocated for more specific budget parameters and objectives set to ensure spending is delivering results.

“I know there’s inflation. I know things are costing more, but they’re costing more for schools, too,” Bitz said. “So Again, our job is to keep the schools strong through fiscal responsibility.”

If elected, Linebarger said he’d be “objective” in evaluating each property tax proposal to come up while on the board. He said he would push for the school district to collect property taxes based on 2019 property values, lower than they are now, to reduce the burden on taxpayers who may be soured by the “sticker shock” of school taxes now.

“At some point, they’re going to have to change the way they do things,” he said. “My solution is, let’s roll back property values to 2019 levels before this inflation really started.”

Orebaugh had a say in the current levies while on the board in 2024, approving sending them to ballots but advocating for a cheaper capital levy than the rest of the board. At the time, district administration said this option would have only funded reactive construction projects rather than preventative updates, and may end up costing more down the line.

Orebaugh’s strategy surrounding tax measures is to leave it up to voters to decide how they want their district to look, acknowledging high costs of living yet the reality that without a levy, there would be extensive cuts in schools.

“I really am torn, I want to respect taxpayers and dollars. That’s why I was like, ‘You guys go vote. You say what you want this district to look like, and I will do what you guys say,’ ” Orebaugh said. “Because I understand some of you are really struggling, and some of you are not, and yet you really want all these extra things for our kids.”

Ballots for the 2025 August primary will be mailed out on July 18. Ballots must be deposited in an official drop box by 8 p.m. Aug. 5 or mailed in time to be postmarked on or before Aug. 5. The top two vote-getters in the race will advance to the general election on Nov. 4.