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Young Libertarian in race for Seattle School Board

author: Alexandra Bradbury
Aug 13, 2005 14:35

Astrid Gielen, 19-year-old UW student and Libertarian Party activist, is one of only two candidates for Seattle School Board Position 4. In a recent interview she outlined her campaign themes of student individuality and fiscal accountability.

Astrid Gielen makes no apologies for her age. An article in this week’s Seattle Weekly curtly dismisses her as “a 19-year-old University of Washington student who’s into libertarian politics and the ‘running-for-office thing.’” But Gielen, one of just two candidates for Seattle School Board Position 4, argues that her direct experience with the schools gives her a valuable insider perspective.

“I think that amidst the PTA members and the soccer moms and the professional politicians, a recent Seattle schools student would help bring diversity to the board and help highlight the concerns of students, as opposed to the concerns of teachers and parents,” she said in an interview on Friday.

Gielen’s remark might have been a reference to her lone opponent, Michael DeBell, who is President of the PTSA at Ballard High School. A third candidate, Sean Russel, initially filed for candidacy, but now that he has withdrawn from the race, Gielen and DeBell will automatically skip over the primary, instead facing off on the November 8 general election ballot. Position 4 represents the Queen Anne-Magnolia area.

All Seattle School Board positions are officially nonpartisan, but Gielen is Vice President of the Libertarians at the University of Washington — and that involvement is what first got her interested in candidacy. “This year a lot of our members were considering running for office,” she said. “I chose school board because I was always unhappy with the way the Seattle schools were run, and I think the board could use someone who has more of the students’ perspective.” Another LUW officer, Morgan Catha, is one of at least four Libertarians planning to run for positions on the King County Council this fall.

Gielen’s biggest campaign issue is her frustration with what she calls “one-size-fits-all education.” “We keep telling kids that they are special and unique and diverse,” she said, “but we treat them like they are just numbers.”

From third through eighth grade, Gielen was a student in the Accelerated Progress Program, which places elementary and middle school students identified as highly capable into an advanced instructional track. She says she was happy with her education until the program abruptly ended with the transition to high school.

At Garfield High School, where most post-APP students are tracked, all ninth graders were required to take the same, ostensibly honors-level course in language arts. After years in accelerated programs, Gielen and her peers now found themselves “learning basic parts of speech in an honors high school class alongside students who literally couldn't tell the difference between a verb and a noun.” Such unrealistic standardization “simply makes everybody miserable,” she said. She advocates tracking, “not by age or by grade, but by capability, so that students are in classes with their intellectual peers.”

To a district in recovery from financial crisis, Gielen offers a prescription of greater fiscal accountability. “I think that no matter how much more money the district gets, they are always going to say how they need more,” she said. “I would really like the board to take a good look at how they are spending the funds they already have, and see where they are wasting it, what they can do more efficiently.”

Four years ago the Seattle Public Schools made headlines with an unexpected $36 million budget shortfall. The district has struggled to cope with the ensuing funding shortage ever since. Earlier this year, the board floated, then abandoned a plan to close 10 schools in the fall. District officials are still trying to figure out how else to cover a $13 million deficit for the 2006-7 school year.

Gielen admits she has not followed school board politics closely, but for this too she is unapologetic, stressing character over specific policy stances. “More than just purporting a stance on every single issue,” she said, “I'd like to convince people that I am a good, reasonable person, and I will approach issues that I face with the outlook I have outlined.”

That outlook generally reflects the individualism of her Libertarian background. Her approach to the district’s persistent racial disparity, for instance, would be “to encourage minority students to challenge themselves, and get their communities involved in pushing for academic achievement.” Since 1998, the high-profile community organization the Coalition to Undo Racism Everywhere has urged the district to tackle its race problems institutionally, focusing public attention on policy issues such as curriculum, staff training, and funding priorities.

The school board’s role as an employer periodically plunges it in controversy, as when it replaced Laidlaw with a nonunion busing contractor three years ago. Gielen, a lifelong Seattle Public Schools student, recalls even farther back to the school bus strike of 1995, when she was in third grade. “I was on the side of the union at that time, because I thought my bus driver was a pretty cool lady,” she said. “I don't have a problem with unions, but I don't like it when tenure and status in a union is more important than a teacher’s competency when it comes to hiring and salary.”

Gielen has not yet begun to campaign in earnest, and when she does, her plans are on the order of friends helping with buttons and t-shirts, rather than the intensive fundraising and volunteer coordination that successful citywide campaigns often demand. Still, in a two-person race with no incumbent, a surprise would not be unheard of. Gielen is upbeat about all possible outcomes. “I am definitely not expecting to be elected, but I definitely would like to be,” she said. “I think if I am not, I see this more as a learning experience for myself — and if it does raise issues, all the better.”

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