[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor, written and submitted by verified residents. It represents the opinion of the authors, and does not necessarily reflect the views of South King Media or its staff.]
On Wednesday night (June 3, 2026), we stood before the Highline School Board as aerospace industry lawyer Highline parent and student addressing public trust, capital levy viability, succession planning transparency and deplorable district leadership behaviors—matters entirely within the board’s policy governance.
We implore this superintendent to actually get to know the communities you serve. Showing up on a campus on a Wednesday morning, simply because you know this crisis is on tonight’s agenda, is a reactionary, “too-little, too-late” gesture that is both inexcusable and unprofessional.
The strength of Aviation High School is completely dependent on its industry connections. Central administration abruptly and unfairly yanked the leadership with those vital connections, fracturing public trust. Without industry trust, Aviation High School will fail. Without taxpayer trust, this district cannot successfully pass the local levies that fund our schools.
Top-down mandates are undermining community collaboration. In response to the district’s planning relative to the North Hill situation, the community established a secure, anonymous email inbox to protect our educators who fear professional retaliation. Through this pipeline, we have learned that instead of addressing actual building leadership issues, the district’s standard recipe is to forcibly reassign principals that push back on irresponsible district mandates to the central office to isolate them.
We see this disruptive pattern repeating right now in the forced transition of Aviation leadership, and a leader from Tyee has just been subjected to a similar reassignment. Furthermore, the selection of the new replacement for Tyee has occurred with absolutely zero involvement or collaboration from the Tyee staff, families, or community. “Nothing about us without us” would be great here. As a woman in aerospace, it is deeply concerning to see the pattern of which leaders receive professional respect. Sidelining female leadership without public justification raises serious questions about institutional bias and discrimination.
The district’s email explicitly stated these school leadership shifts were used to create “additional budget options.” This directly contradicts the written promise from March 20th that budget cuts would be “focused on central office, not schools.” The fiscal logic fails completely. The district claims to save money, yet they are paying two administrator salaries—keeping a successful leader on the payroll to sit in the central office while paying an interim leader to step in. This isn’t budget mitigation; it is a tactical shell game to mask budget and leadership challenges. If leadership claims they removed a successful principal because they “lost trust” in her, we must ask this board: How can this administration expect a building leader to maintain their trust, when your own lack of transparency, double-salaried waste, and broken promises have caused the entire community to lose trust in you?
Our communities are paying the price on the ground. Staff reports reveal that at Tyee, teachers are being told to hide the fact that classrooms are unbearably hot so voters pass the levy. Silencing educators while kids swelter is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, the lack of actual district engagement at Aviation is embarrassing. Staff have been stonewalled for ten weeks seeking solutions for the Career Center. An essential, upcoming student trip to Pensacola is stalled because unanswered parent emails reveal no one is left with the industry connections and institutional knowledge required to coordinate these national flight programs. Just today, central office data specialists were frantically moving state-mandated graduation assistance deadlines because the administration completely disrupted building operations at the critical end of the school year. While leadership promises to “preserve” these programs, public records requests seeking specificities have been effectively denied or delayed.
We stand united around three basic requests:
- Implement Responsible Succession Planning: Let the building principal attend graduation with her seniors. Respect school leadership and communities by involving them in the principal selection process.
- Stop Hiding the Data: Fulfill the public records requests and release budget information to provide actual transparency.
- End Intimidation: Stop telling staff to hide working conditions and end back-channel rumors.
Our students deserve an administration that models the exact honesty and accountability we expect from them.
Thanks,
Kristen Price and Maliha Joof
School District Responds
We reached out to Highline Public Schools for a response, and they said:
“This letter reflects the opinions and perspectives of its authors and includes statements that do not accurately reflect the decisions and actions taken by Highline Public Schools.”
Do you have an opinion you’d like to share with our highly engaged local Readers? If so, please email your Letter to the Editor to scott@southkingmedia.com and, pending review and verification that you’re a real human being, we may publish it. Letter writers must use their full name, as well as provide an address and phone number (NOT for publication but for verification purposes).
