We in a quiet way on several occasions have talked up Marcie Maxwell in her race for an open seat in the state House of Representative, representing the 41st District. Now, after talking with her opponent, Steve Litzow of Mercer Island, we can whole-heartedly give our endorsement to Maxwell.
Maxwell brings to the race several pluses, all of which make her eminently qualified to represent Renton and the entire district in the state Legislature.
One plus we have talked about is that her election would mean that for the first time in many years, Renton would have one of its own in the state Legislature. In so many ways Maxwell has already confirmed her commitment to the people of Renton; now she’s signaling clearly that she’s going to make that same commitment to the people of the 41st District.
She, better than Litzow, understands the district, including – and critically – that it’s not an island of the rich and privileged. She is a small business owner; she understands how to do more with less. She’s a Renton School Board member; she understands that all children are not created equal. She’s a Realtor who helps people meet their most basic need; she understands, after sitting at their kitchen tables, their hopes and their worries about the future.
All those add up to someone who can listen thoughtfully to all sides of the critical issues facing the state, from tight budgets to accountability in our schools and to the real concerns of real people about what they need from their state government. She and Litzow both speak of priorities of government. Those priorities come from the people in our bottom-up form of government.
Litzow certainly is articulate and speaks with certainty about the directions the state Legislature should take, in his view. He calls the 41st District a swing district, meaning it’s probably up for grabs by a Republican or a Democrat. Today, it’s swinging toward Maxwell; she’s a Democrat. A political icon in the 41st, Fred Jarrett, already saw the pendulum change directions. Once a Republican, he’s now a Democrat.
We’re also having a hard time getting past what Litzow told the Mercer Island Reporter, that the Renton School District is the worst in the 41st District. If you want a measure of success, go to Mercer Island or Bellevue, he says. Sure, Mercer Island and Bellevue are richer districts, but Renton is enriched by its diversity, which brings its own challenges, too.
If you want to understand a community, just look at its children. Every success and failure is mirrored in their faces, in the clothes they wear and in what they put in their lunch boxes. Litzow lays at Maxwell’s feet the fact that Renton’s three middle schools haven’t met the standards of achievement, based on the certain groups or cells of students in the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). Interestingly, Mercer Island’s middle school is home to only about half of the possible 37 cells. Those cells are composed based on such things as race and family income.
Maxwell and the other Renton School Board members can take credit for putting together a management team, starting at the top with Mary Alice Heuschel, that is intimately schooled in how the WASL works and how a local district can excel under its strictures. They just need time to make the changes everyone agrees are needed. Calling the Renton School District “the worst” doesn’t help.
Other school directors, including all five on Mercer Island, vouch for Maxwell’s understanding of how schools work and her commitment to children. That alone, in a state where education is its paramount duty, qualifies Maxwell for a seat at the legislative table.
