Former state superintendent Billings eyes education post
Billings said yesterday that she wants to talk to a few more people and mull over the issues before making a decision about whether to challenge incumbent Terry Bergeson as state superintendent of public instruction.
"If all that seems to come together, then it's going to be a go," she said.
Billings plans to announce her decision soon after she returns from an international AIDS conference in Bangkok in a few weeks.
If she enters this year's race, it would be the second time that she and Bergeson have campaigned against each other for the nonpartisan post. They both were candidates for the office in 1992, when Billings was running for her second term and Bergeson was the challenger. Billings narrowly won that race.
Billings' candidacy would be another sign that the Washington Education Association (WEA), the state's largest teachers union, is unhappy with Bergeson's leadership.
It's no secret, said political consultant Cathy Allen, that both the WEA and Billings have been looking for candidates to challenge Bergeson, as have some members of the state Parent Teacher Association.
The WEA did not endorse Bergeson this year, citing concerns about her support for a charter-schools bill that passed this spring and about the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).
Billings, however, recently won the WEA's "Friend of Education Award."
She would be the third candidate in this year's race. Juanita Doyon, a parent who has been critical of the state's education-reform effort and an organizer of the group Mothers Against WASL, also is in the race. The WEA didn't endorse Doyon, either.
Billings, 64, left office in 1996 after she announced she had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, which she has said she contracted in the early 1980s when she was artificially inseminated with infected donor sperm.
She had planned to leave the superintendent job anyway and was considering running for Congress, but her family talked her out of that race because of health concerns.
Billings' acknowledgment, one of the first by a high-ranking state official, made her an instant celebrity, and she has since worked to raise awareness about AIDS and promote AIDS education on a state and national level. She has stayed active in other education issues, as well.
Billings says her health is "excellent" and that she would have "no hesitation about having my doctor talk to the press."
She declined to say much about what she would promote as a candidate before she makes a decision about running. But she did say that education funding is a big issue that isn't getting enough attention.
Billings also said she now opposes charter schools, a hot-button issue for the WEA, which is working to repeal legislation passed this spring that would allow the first privately run, publicly funded schools in this state.
In 2000, however, she co-chaired an initiative campaign to bring charter schools to Washington. She said yesterday she had changed her mind in part because the voters rejected that measure.
Bergeson, 61, is running for a third four-year term. She first won the seat the year that Billings did not seek re-election. For the past eight years, she has been a leader in this state's decadelong effort to set learning standards, and to design tests to see if students can reach them. Before she was superintendent, she was executive director of the state Commission on Student Learning and served as president of the WEA.
Bergeson already has been endorsed by Gov. Gary Locke; several state legislators; James Kelly, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle; and Lisa Bond, president of the Seattle PTSA organization.
Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com