Dads square off for seat on Cheney School Board

Like so many things in life, the Cheney School District is experiencing the proverbial growing pains that come with expansion.

Last year, voters signed off on a school bond that will allow the district to welcome a new school campus and make improvements throughout the district. Months earlier, the Cheney School Board reached an agreement on a three-year contract days before the start of the school year that avoided a potential strike .

But with a service area of 380 square miles, the largest in Spokane County by size, and with the fourth highest student population in the county, a current school board member said it’s been a challenge to maintain a unified identity during its growth.

Meanwhile, despite the new contract, the man running to replace him on the board said some teachers in the district still need a second source of income beyond their district salary.

The race to represent District 1 on the Cheney School Board pits incumbent Mark Scott against challenger Kyle Belock in a race that will help shape the district’s growth going forward.

Four years after he secured a seat on the board by defeating an incumbent by nearly 10 percentage points, Scott now serves as president of the board and represents Area 10 for the Washington State School Directors Association, a region that includes districts south of Cheney and Spokane.

Scott said he’s running for re-election for the school board because he wants to “continue to help lead the Cheney School District in the right direction and help students be as successful as possible for their future and the demands of being a successful citizen.”

To accomplish this, Scott said the district should “hold students to high standards” and ensure the district has a partnership with parents. Scott also said it’s important to protect the rights of parents to access their student records and be involved in their child’s education.

“I think it’s really important to partner with parents and make sure that parent involvement and their rights are protected,” Scott said.

The Cheney District, Scott said, has “room to grow” in this area, including taking a more proactive approach to parent involvement.

Scott said the district’s primary educational focus should be on the “basics of education” to ensure that students have the “foundational skills” of reading, writing and math.

“And that, they’re building their social skills so that they can be as successful as possible in whatever endeavor they choose,” Scott said. “Higher education, community service, military and, obviously, the trades are in high demand.”

Scott said he would like to see the district expand its offerings in career and technical education, which he said allows students to explore potential career paths, and suggested potential courses in computer science, welding, building, and plumbing and electrical.

“There’s lots of different avenues that are encompassed under that umbrella,” Scott said. “I think it’s important to give our students the opportunity to have exposure in those areas.”

The district is likely to see continued growth, particularly after voters approved a $72 million bond in the 2024 election, money that will be used to build a new elementary school and fund other upgrades in the district.

“I’m proud of our board for getting the bond passed and we’ll build a new school and purchase some more land for our district,” Scott said. “And really working hard to unify our three distinct communities, because the Cheney School District is such a large geographic area. I’m really proud of those achievements.”

The expansion of the district, Scott said, will make it challenging to build a sense of community between Cheney, the West Plains and Airway Heights as “we move forward and continue to grow.”

“We’ve had to meet challenges like bus loops, and drive times and start times for schools, that’s something that we’re continuing to look at, trying to make it amendable and the correct schedule for school start and stop times, and school buses,” Scott said. “It’s challenging. But I think that if we’re committed to having a unified sense of ourselves as a community, the Cheney School District is ready for it.”

A first-time candidate and a father of five with one more on the way, Belock said in an interview that his candidacy was an “intentional decision” and that he “gave it a lot of thought.”

“I think we’ve got to work on communication,” Belock said. “And support for unions. That’s really, that’s what I’m about.”

The decision, he said, ultimately came down to a perceived lack of interaction with the school board and a desire to repair the “growing disconnect” in the district, something he said his family has experienced firsthand and something he’s heard from other families as he’s campaigned.

“The reason I’m running for school board, primarily, is I feel like I need to support or restore some kind of communication between the school board and parents.”

To do so, Belock proposed holding listening sessions so that families could provide feedback and ask questions in person.

“I would like to find some way to restore that communication so that folks can feel like they can report things, not necessarily in public, but I want to restore that ability to reach out to people individually,” Belock said.

Belock said the role of a school board member is to “hire and take care of” a large group of employees, and rely on their expertise to help guide the district, which includes an additional focus on mental health. While he was “hesitant to talk about adding additional resources” without doing a deeper dive on the district’s current finances, Belock said “it is important to increase the percentage, without raw numbers, to increase the percentage of whatever we’re doing towards mental health care for our students.”

“I think we all need to trust mental health experts, medical health experts and other professionals,” Belock said. “And largely speaking, they agree that mental health care is important, and it’s important for students’ growth and well-being. And I’d like to think that as parents, we can agree on that. So just generally being supportive of all of our students.”

A self-described “full, proud union supporter,” Belock said he was also frustrated by protracted negotiations between the teacher’s union and the district, which threatened to delay the start of the 2024-25 school year. While union members voted to authorize a strike, an agreement was reached just before the first day of school, averting the potential for picket lines outside school facilities.

Belock said he became frustrated after his son told him this summer that some teachers in the district have picked up second jobs or do gig work to make ends meet, something he said was “weird to hear.”

“I don’t feel like our hourly employees, as well as our teachers, are getting the support that they need,” Belock said. “And I’m aware that there are a fair amount of problems with turnover rates as well, and losing employees to the larger region.”