Just as the four candidates for the Edmonds School Board District No. 3 seat come from different backgrounds, they have varying ideas about the district’s challenges, what they’d do to address those problems and what should be prioritized in a tight fiscal climate.

Jon Howeiler is a program officer in the Education Program at the University of Washington Bothell. He has worked as a public high school teacher and administrator and has a master’s in education. He’s also done doctoral work in the field.

Howeiler said that student achievement is a district challenge, but that most of the attention in that area goes to the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL.

“The WASL is an important assessment and we need to live with that, but we need to make sure that is one aspect of student achievement,” he said.

Since teachers have the biggest impact on student achievement, it’s important to attract and retain high-quality teachers and offer enough professional development, Howeiler said.

Making sure that curriculum is well-researched and that there is input from various constituents are important too, he said.

Incumbent Gary Noble, who’s served on the Edmonds School Board for four years, said the three biggest challenges facing the district are student achievement, reduced funding and keeping the district’s capital projects plan online.

“We’re not where we want to be,” he said of student achievement. The district is more successful in literacy because of the resources placed there, but struggles in math, he said.

Along those lines, Noble also wants to see more professional development for teachers.

“Where you get the dollars to accomplish that is another question,” he said. “But that is key.”

Mark Laurence, a retired Merchant Marine who’s volunteered in schools and whose five children went through district schools, said he sees one main challenge for the district: rewriting its mission statement to have the goal of competing on an international level.

“The graduation rate is abysmal — (students) can’t compete on the world stage,” he said. “Education is so important and needs to be put back as the most important thing in society.”

Douglas Kerley is retired with two children still in district schools. He helped start the automotive program at Shoreline Community College, he said, and he’s reviewed text books for the district, among other school involvement.

One of the district’s main challenges is the need for communication between the district and colleges and universities. Continuous and relevant programs need to be offered, he said.

“We need to fill the needs of the businesses and the students here,” Kerley said.

To that end, Kerley suggests work groups of teachers to help coordinate math and other programs between the district and community colleges.

He also advocates for teaching Asian languages in the schools, including Mandarin. Finally, he sees children’s safety as a challenge.

“We need to aggressively combat drugs in the schools and aggressively combat (for) personal safety in the schools,” Kerley said.

Money is another challenge for the district. The district had to cut about $4.5 million this spring thanks to declining enrollment, inadequate state funding and other factors.

To address the money issue, Kerley said he advocates for partnering with local businesses.

Howeiler said that his first funding priority, if things are to be cut, is student achievement, and that teacher salaries must be maintained. Community input is key, and he favors pursuing more public-private partnerships to bring in money, he said.

Noble said that as a result of community input this year in the budget process, the district scaled back its math initiative, cut less teachers than it originally proposed and did not cut other offerings that were valuable to parents, including the middle school activity buses.

Laurence said that to address a fiscal crunch he’d recommend cutting whatever could be cut that didn’t hurt the quality of education.

“I don’t think taxpayers are getting enough for their money. The result is not a highly educated individual,” he said. “But we have to tax ourselves more to create the educational system we need. Otherwise we’re living with poor results.”