Editor,

We are supporting Linda Racicot for school board in the upcoming election.

We are all former South Whidbey School Board members and our support comes from our perspective of 40 years service on multiple boards, some of us serving with Linda.

We have seen the boards deal with many challenges and have worked with a half dozen superintendents to address them.

Linda Racicot has been one of the most outstanding board members we have known in that time. As a teacher for 35 years and full-time at Langley Middle School for 27 years, she has a teacher’s professional insight to what works and doesn’t work in our district and our community. During that time she has also benefited the lives of many kids through other community service and youth activities.

Following her retirement from teaching – including teaching some of our own kids and grandkids – Linda dedicated herself to a thorough and committed effort to learn the workings of a school board and the issues it faces. For a full year before running for the board, she attended every board meeting, workshop and community forum to get ready.

That effort has paid off for South Whidbey in her leadership and judgment, including six years as board chair. The board has kept the district on an even keel through continuing declining enrollment brought on by dramatic shifts in demographics as South Whidbey continues to grow older and more affluent. Despite these challenges, the board has been able to increase curriculum opportunities in many cases through judicious use of technology even as our numbers of students and teachers gets smaller.

Linda came onto a board when the district was operating well below student and staff capacity and now we are utilizing our most modern facilities at effective levels, while at the same time successfully repurposing some of our most loved and historical facilities for community service in a way that is self-supporting, ensuring they are not lost to the district and the community.

We urge sending Linda once again to the board in November to continue her long-standing service to our children and community.

Dr. Fred O’Neal, Greg Gilles, Todd Peterson, Steve Scoles, Sally Windecker