By Sean Robinson
It’s easy to reduce political races to simplistic frames, but sometimes they still fit.
Consider this year’s general election contest for Position 1 on the Tacoma School Board. While issues such as school funding and lingering angst from last year’s teacher strike loom large, it’s hard to look at incumbent Debbie Winskill and challenger Lisa Keating without seeing a generational dynamic: old Tacoma versus new Tacoma.
Winskill, 71, ranks as the city’s longest-serving elected official, and among the longest-serving in the state. She was first elected in 1989, when George H.W. Bush was president. She’s been in office longer than U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, elected in 1992.
She’s worked with seven school superintendents, starting with Lillian Barna. She watched and worked with Barna’s successors, serving during the brief and turbulent two-year tenure of Rudy Crew in the early 1990s, and the even briefer and more turbulent tenure of Charlie Milligan in the mid-2000s. Her children attended Tacoma schools, and now so do her grandchildren.
In short, Winskill has institutional memory to burn, and deep knowledge of the levers that move district policy. She thinks that counts for something.
“I think it’s really important,” she said. “People are always asking about the background of why we do things and what came before. I think it’s important for the district to have that institutional knowledge. There’s very few people who do. I’m still very interested in the job. I’m out and about in all the schools, doing as much as I can to know what’s happening. I think I make good decisions. I have a lot of knowledge about the operations of the school district.”
Keating, 48, comes from another time. She’s also the parent of a Tacoma student, and she sees recent changes in attitude and culture that reflect evolving views in education as well as society.
“I was in high school when (Winskill) was first elected,” she said. “I’ve been a community partner with the district and within the district for about 10 years. I’ve really spent a significant amount of effort in helping with the implementation of policy and school climate.
“In 2012, nobody was talking about gender identity,” Keating added. “Marriage equality hadn’t even passed. We’ve moved the bar in terms of protections and safety and civil rights protections. That tipping point has happened, then you get people like me who have been a part of the groundwork. I felt like I had to run at this point.”
Measured by fund-raising and endorsements, Keating is way ahead. State campaign-finance records show she’s raised more than $28,000 and spent $18,000 — big numbers for a school board race. Her campaign hosts an active Facebook page with regular updates. She’s backed and endorsed by heavy political hitters, including Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, state Rep. and incoming Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, (D-Tacoma) and Democratic organizations from the area’s three legislative districts. The Washington Education Association supports Keating, as does the organization’s local arm in Tacoma.
And Winskill? Her campaign finance records are a blank slate. She’s chosen the mini-reporting option, an approach that signals her intent to raise and spend less than $5,000. She doesn’t appear to have a campaign website, or a campaign Facebook page.
In the digital age, is it possible to win a race without such trappings, money and backing? Winskill can say yes. Her previous race in 2013 followed a similar pattern. Challenger Dexter Gordon raised $43,000 that year, more than Keating’s 2019 tally. He racked up local endorsements from prominent figures and organizations, much like Keating — and lost. Winskill, running the same low-budget campaign she’s mounted in 2019, spent less than $5,000, and won re-election decisively with 55 percent of the vote.
“I’ve never gotten the TEA endorsement in all the times that I’ve run,” she said. “Never. Who knows why they didn’t endorse me. I try to do the right thing for everybody involved, but I am not a representative of the union. I represent the taxpayers of Tacoma.”
Keating cites her decade of activism and grassroots involvement with Tacoma schools as a solid launch pad to service on the board. She leads My Purple Umbrella, an organization that supports LGBTQ students and families.
While she has focused on issues such as anti-bullying initiatives and school safety, she said she intends to dig into district finances and costs.
“I would want the community to know that I would take this role very seriously and I take the responsibility of being fiscally responsible and accountable very seriously,” she said. “I’ve been a small business owner and I’m married to a small business owner, so we understand fiscal responsibility. I would bring that knowledge and that lens to the school board.”
The 2018 strike and the resulting community fallout drove Keating’s decision to run, she said. The district’s communications strategy, marked by generic messages from administration and limited public comment from school board members, left a bitter taste.
“I was really disheartened by the messaging that was coming out of the district about our teachers, and also how our board was inaccessible to the public,” she said. “We never got to hold them accountable and have a dialogue about how we got here. I understand that it’s partly the McCleary fix, the levy fix, but in terms of how the teachers were talked about, it really felt like they were being demonized. Had the board been more accessible to the public, maybe a lot of this distrust and assumptions over budget decisions would have been negated.”
Winskill, who watched the strike play out in the media (a spectacle she’d seen before), did not defend the district’s communication strategy, but she cited her personal interactions with members of the public, as well as her low-tech approach. Her personal phone number still appears on the district’s website, as it has for years.
“I responded to everybody who called me, and I called back almost every person that called me,” she said. “I fielded many, many calls over that time period. I’m not much of an emailer. It’s not personal.”
She added that the state’s legislative fix left Tacoma in a fiscal pit with little warning, and the resulting strike caught members off guard.
“The district’s working really hard to get past the strike, meeting more regularly with the union,” she added. “I think even though the union didn’t endorse me, I have a very good relationship with people in the union.”
Winskill noted that her store of knowledge sometimes translates to resisting or voting against decisions by administrators. When the district fired longtime employee Ken Wilson in 2016 in the midst of a water-testing controversy, Winskill cast the lone no-vote, believing the decision was punitive. Wilson subsequently sued the district for wrongful termination and won a $250,000 settlement.
“There are people who think that the administration is always going to tell them the right answer,” Winskill said. “I just think sometimes they need to be questioned.”
Keating, while acknowledging that she will face a learning curve if elected, said she won’t be a rubber stamp for district administration, a concern she’s heard on the campaign trail about the current board.
“I’ve talked to educators and people in the district who feel that way,” she said. “I will never assume that the superintendent knows all and sees all or that the school board knows all and sees all. What I will say is that I have a record as a community leader. I ask a lot of questions, and the reason I ask these questions is so I can get a full spectrum of understanding of whatever the issue is, so that I can form my opinion. I don’t have an agenda going in other than increasing the transparency and communication of the board. I want to see the board make equitable funding and budget decisions so that there’s the least impact on our students while at the same time valuing the educational professionals who work for Tacoma Schools.”