School Board Candidate Running on Teaching Experience

will be the first to tell you that she doesn’t have a strategy.

Instead, she hopes to be elected to the Clover Park School Board based on her 17 years of teaching—and her passion for public education.

In challenging incumbent for the District 5 director position, Caldwell is in the only contested school-board race this year.

“I’ve never campaigned,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know anything about it. The (county elections) people keep sending me things saying to get this paperwork in and get that that paperwork in, and I’m like ‘OK, I’m doing it!’ ”

Caldwell, who has lived in Lakewood on and off throughout her life, most recently since 2001, is a third-grade teacher in the Bethel School District in nearby Spanaway.

She acknowledges that some people may raise an eyebrow at a teacher from another district setting policy for CPSD—educators are not allowed to run in the district for which they work—but she thinks that having a husband in the military and two children at Lakes High School gives her a good understanding of the district’s needs.

“I have dealt with four deployments, single parenting, all of the challenges that come with military life,” she said. “I have two kids who have gone through the public schools.

“I think I could be very helpful. Even though this isn’t where I’m working, it’s where I live.”

Her own school, Thompson Elementary, is in its third year of not meeting Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) standards and has similar demographics to many CPSD schools: low socioeconomics, high turnover and a large percentage of students on free and reduced-price lunch.

Caldwell noted that it is not uncommon for school-board directors not to have a background in education.

“Everybody thinks that they know education because they have been through the school system, but that is so not true,” she said. “They don’t understand the behind-the-scenes, all of the preparation that is involved …”

Caldwell is the lead negotiator for Bethel’s teachers union and said she is also involved with the leadership team at her school.

“The positive things I am seeing in education, I could help push for them here,” she said. “Not that it’s not happening, but (I have) a different perspective.”

Caldwell’s main focus is student achievement, and she mentioned that CPSD’s test scores are a perennial concern in the community.

“My belief is that you get out of education what you put into it,” she said. “If you are a supportive parent and are helping your child succeed and achieve, your child is going to be successful.”

She also wants to make sure that, if elected to the board, she does not come across as “elevated.”

“I want to be approachable to a child, a teacher, a parent,” she said. “I don’t want them to think I don’t understand.

“For me, it’s not about being in a powerful position. I don’t see it that way at all. I think you’re supposed to be a representative of the people around you.”

Caldwell said that her favorite thing about CPSD is its diversity.

“I love that you can go into any school and you’re not just looking at any one ethnic background,” she said. “There are so many different cultures.”

Caldwell spent most of her own childhood bouncing between Lakewood and military deployments—her father was stationed at Fort Lewis—and moved back to the area with her mother when her parents divorced. She graduated from Lakes and went on to earn a bachelor’s of K-8 education from Washington State University. She also has a master’s degree in grades 4-12 technology.

It was her basketball coach at Mann Junior High who inspired her to go into education.

“He became like my second dad, I guess you could say, and he was a teacher.”

When she isn’t focusing on educational matters, Caldwell enjoys reading—she varies between “teacher books” and fantasy novels—and couponing. And she has a whole new set of worries—Jared, a sophomore, is going out for football this fall, and Janessa, a senior, has just started driving.

“My kids are getting older,” she said. “They don’t need me as much, so I can definitely see myself going into a different role and helping other people.”

And, if anything, she said, “I will have learned a lot just about the election process.

“I’m all about continuing to learn.”