Dick Rylander provides an analysis of the Battle Ground School District’s November 2026 EP&O Levy Dick Rylander for Clark County Today This article is my analysis based on my research and interpretations. It contains a significant amount of detail and numbers. As such, if you need clarifications please reach out to someone whose opinion you trust and ask for their assistance. Every attempt has been made to be accurate and, in the case of projections or estimates, to incorporate information gleaned from conversations. If there are factual errors please notify me. On Thursday July 16, 2026 the BGSD Superintendent (Shelly Whitten) presented a levy proposal to the School Board … [Read more...]
A New Operating System for K–12 Education
This article was published at American Thinker. Kevin Finn is the author. It will take about 5 minutes to read. Teaching is an art as much as it may be a science. I liken it to conducting an orchestra. Just as the conductor leads his orchestra, the teacher guides his class. The conductor ensures that each musician is playing at the right tempo and volume, and the teacher ensures that each student is on task and contributing to the best of his abilities. Different conductors will lead their orchestras to perform the same piece of music in slightly different ways just as different teachers will teach the same subject in slightly different ways. Unlike orchestras, where each … [Read more...]
Legislation to Defend Parents’ Rights in Education
If you've been watching the news lately you've seen the FBI investigating parents for being too vocal at school board meetings. You've seen the National School Board Association claim that parents who get too loud are terrorists. After huge pushback across the nation they apologized (https://noahwebstereducationalfoundation.org/nsba-apologizes-for-calling-parents-domestic-terrorists/). That doesn't mean anything has changed. Parents who disagree with school board and district actions have every right to be heard. Today's article comes from Townhall and Landon Mion. Give it a read at their site or scan through it below. In any case if you have had local situations where your rights have … [Read more...]
Battle Ground School District – November 2021 Levy: Fact Check
Well it seems that the social media services have been forcing a "fact check" on topics they deem worthy of attention. So, we thought we would take the same approach to the Battle Ground Levy. We'll link to the levy brochure the district created. Then we'll work our way through their claims and share our "fact checker" results. Most things are not black and white so we'll also explore the shades of gray. Here's a link to the brochure: https://www.battlegroundps.org/levy/ Before we get into the details please remember one thing. The last levy used a completely different system vs. the current levy. The old rate in the last levy was around $3.66/$1000. When the state raised property … [Read more...]
ESSA in Washington State – Vancouver Public Forum
On Thursday evening June 16th Gil Mendoza and Gayle Pauley (both are Assistant Superintendents reporting to Randy Dorn) conducted a two (2) hour Town Hall event at ESD 112 from 6 to 8pm. The audience consisted of ~40-50 people. Most appeared to be teachers, some school board members and a few parents/grandparents. In addition there appeared to be 8-10 people from OSPI. This was the 3rd in a series of 9 events to be held throughout the state. Below we share our notes as well as thoughts and impressions for your consideration: The opening 45 minutes was a series of slides in a presentation. This link will take you to the slides they used: … [Read more...]