Rice named new Yakima school board president

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The Yakima school board has a new president.

Martha Rice, a 12-year veteran of the board of directors of the Yakima School District, was unanimously elected board president during a meeting Tuesday night.

Rice was appointed to the board in 1998. Currently, she's the board's longest-serving member.

Rice has served as both vice president and president of the Washington State School Directors' Association. This is her first stint as president of the Yakima school board.

She takes the reins from Vickie Ybarra, who resigned to pursue a doctoral fellowship at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Ybarra had been board president since 2005.

"We've had good strong leaders in the past, and while I won't necessarily follow in their footsteps I will use their footsteps as a guide in my leadership position on the board," Rice said Wednesday. "And I am honored that my fellow board members have confidence in my leadership abilities."

Rice was nominated for the president position by board member Walt Ranta.

Outgoing president Ybarra did not vote. She officially stepped down from the top spot at Tuesday's meeting after eight years on the school board.

Rice will hold the top spot until December, when the board holds its annual restructuring meeting. Meantime, John Vornbrock will continue to serve as vice president. And there are many issues facing the district.

Among them, Rice said, are the ongoing construction projects of replacing Eisenhower High School and remodeling Davis High School, and looking at ways to improve alternative programs, including possibly relocating Stanton Academy, the district's alternative high school in Union Gap.

"On a bigger scale, of course, there's the whole issue with the economy and funding at both the state and federal level," Rice said. "We've been hearing that it looks like the projected deficit for the state is about maybe $3 billion for next year."

This year, the state faced a $2.8 billion shortfall. To make up for it, lawmakers dipped into reserves and relied on federal funding and higher revenue -- mostly from tax increases on items like beer, soda, bottled water and candy.

Still, the $31 billion supplemental budget has about $755 million in cuts from last year's 2009-2011 budget. And those reductions include almost $120 million in K-12 public education funding.

The Yakima School District, which employs some 1,740 full-time and part-time staff members, has implemented several cost-saving strategies, such as limiting overtime pay, travel and discretionary spending, and eliminating seven positions in the central office.

The school board, including a newly appointed member, might need to look at additional cuts in the coming year.

Wednesday night, school board members were slated to interview the four community members who have applied for the vacant seat on the board. Board members were expected to appoint one of them late in the evening.

The applicants are: Earl Lee, David Garcia, Richard Colgan and Leslie Wahl.

Lee, interim principal at the Yakama Nation Tribal School, ran for a spot on the school board last fall, losing to incumbent Ranta,
a retired teacher.

Garcia is the coordinator of parent support at Ready by Five, which aims to prepare children for kindergarten in five of Yakima's poorest census tracks on the east end of the city.

Colgan, now retired, most recently worked as an instructor aboard the aircraft carriers U.S.S. Nimitz and U.S.S. George Washington for the Department of Defense through Central Texas College.

Wahl, also retired, is a board member of the Yakima Area Arboretum and founder and past president of the Yakima Environmental Learning Foundation.

The Yakima School District, the largest in the Yakima Valley, has nearly 14,600 students.

*Adriana Janovich can be reached at 509-577-7653 or ajanovich@yakimaherald.com.