Judith Billings will run to get school job back
Billings plans to hold a news conference today to announce that she will join the candidates challenging incumbent Terry Bergeson.
Bergeson is seeking a third term in the state's top education post, which she has held since Billings left it in 1997.
Billings yesterday said that since she left office, she's become "concerned about things I see happening and things I don't see happening."
Her entrance into the race will raise its profile and give voters the choice between two experienced, well-known candidates who are likely to have different views on a number of issues.
Each has a strong base of support and strong opponents, said Cathy Allen, a political consultant.
Billings said she wants to "broaden the discussion" of a number of issues, especially testing and education funding. She said the state's testing system is "going in a direction that wasn't what I think we had in mind."
When she was in office, she said, the idea was that student learning would be evaluated with tests, but also through work they had done in the classroom.
On funding, she said: "We have never adequately funded education, and we're still not doing it."
Bergeson also has lobbied for more funding for education and says that although the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is a good tool, it isn't the goal of education.
But some, including many Washington Education Association (WEA) leaders, are critical of her efforts in both areas.
Bergeson couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.
Billings, 64, held the nonpartisan post for eight years. Bergeson challenged her for the post in 1992; Billings narrowly won that race.
Bergeson, 61, a former WEA president and former executive director of the state Commission on Student Learning, was elected to the superintendent's post in November 1996. Billings had announced earlier that year she was HIV positive and was leaving the job.
She said she contracted the virus in the early 1980s when she was artificially inseminated with infected donor sperm. At the time, she was considering running for Congress, but stayed out because of health concerns.
But her health is "terrific," she says, and her doctor fully supports her decision to run. Since leaving office, she has worked to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS.
Billings said she had been thinking about running since the end of last year, but a number of personal matters, including the deaths of her father and a close friend, kept her from going forward earlier. Those events, she said, caused her to reflect on what she really wanted to do.
"I'm a 42-year educator," she said. "This is where I've spent my life, and it really matters to me what happens to kids."
The other candidates in the race are Juanita Doyon, one of the organizers of Mothers Against WASL; David Blomstrom and Kumroon Maksirisombat. None is as well-known as Billings and Bergeson.
The WEA — the state's largest teachers union — had been searching for candidates to enter the race. Spokeswoman Debra Carnes said Billings surfaced as one possibility, and that the union had talked with her. But Carnes said the WEA won't decide whether to endorse Billings until the board of the union's political action committee meets Aug. 16.
Earlier this year, the union had decided against endorsing any candidate in the race.
Many WEA members are frustrated with Bergeson's approach to school accountability and her support of charter schools, Carnes said. She said members also think Bergeson is out of touch with what's needed in the classroom.
The WEA is one of the groups working to repeal the charter-school legislation that passed last spring. Billings recently said she also opposes charter schools, even though she was co-chairwoman of the 2000 initiative campaign to allow them in the state. She said voters' defeat of that measure was part of what prompted her change of heart.
Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com