Eastmont Interim Super Facing Numerous Challenges In New Role

The Eastmont School District has a new leader at the helm.

Spencer Taylor, the District's executive director of elementary education for the past 11 years, assumed the title of interim superintendent earlier this month following the departure of previous superintendent Becky Berg, who announced her retirement last month.

Taylor says one of the first things he did upon assuming his new role was phasing out his previous position.

"One of the first things I decided to do was to not fill my past position. It's just a budget-saving measure as we look at some budget challenges for next year. We want to make sure that we continue to be good stewards of our community's resources."

The budget, Taylor says, is one of several issues he and the District will be facing as 2025 dawns.

"Everyone's facing increased costs across the state and the nation, but here in our district we're also facing low birth rates. We simply don't have enough babies being born that ultimately come to us as kindergartners, so we're facing a declining enrollment in the years ahead. Student well-being and mental health is also a continuing concern. We're seeing more students all the time at all grade levels who are dealing with a lot of emotional challenges and there's truly not enough support lines for them within the community."

Several schools in the District also continue to deal with aging facilities and infrastructure with no financial remedies in sight, following the narrow failure of two bond proposals that went before voters over the past year.

"I get it, " says Taylor. "I'm a longtime resident of East Wenatchee and a former student of Eastmont schools, and I know that people want to spend their money wisely and I take that to heart as the interim superintendent. We don't want to put good money toward bad plans. We want to make sure any plans we have for the future are solid and will last a long time. We also don't want to put a lot of money into maintaining these old schools we have."

Taylor says the District is planning to have a series of meetings in the new year involving major stakeholders and community members to help it draft a plan that is amenable to as many people as possible before going back to voters with another bond proposal.

Eastmont's new interim superintendent also says he hopes the District will not remain in the spotlight for its potentially-groundbreaking suggestion to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) that transgender student athletes be able to participate in their own specific division of sports competition.

"As a school district, we just want to take care of our kids and make sure they have places to go to where they can thrive. We didn't really want to become the focal point for this issue in the state or the nation, we simply wanted to look at the situation and come up with a solution that could be a win-win for everybody. We don't want our girls to complete in athletics if it isn't fair and we don't want students who identify as transgender to become the focus of scrutiny, we just want them to have a place in all of this where they can compete fairly as well. So we just put forth the idea, and we're just hoping the people who can and do make the decisions come up with a good one, whether it happens to be ours or not."

The WIAA will discuss amendments to its current rules regarding transgender athletes at its annual Winter meetings next month and vote on any proposals regarding the issue in April.