'Wenatchee Schools Are Failing' Writes Chelan-Douglas Board of Health Member in Letter to Wenatchee Voters

Board of Health director and COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Bill Sullivan is urging Wenatchee residents to vote for Randy Smith and Tricia Cleek for school board

Chelan-Douglas Health District Board member and Covid-19 conspiracy theorist Bill Sullivan parrots local right-wing influencer Richard “Dick” Black and Grace City Church Pastor Josh McPherson in a letter sent to Wenatchee voters this week.

The letter, appearing under the letterhead of the heretofore unheard-of “Wenatchee Values Alliance” and signed by Sullivan, claims that “Wenatchee schools are failing” and asks the question: “Does WSD intend to educate our children, or re-educate them?”

Sullivan urges Wenatchee voters to vote for Randy Smith and Tricia Cleek in the upcoming elections and quotes an anonymous local teacher who quit and pulled her three children out of school because “what they are doing in the name of gender and sexuality is criminal.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion policies, critical race theory, “transgender ideology” and social-emotional learning are all cited as reasons that “students are fleeing in droves.”

“While Wenatchee schools hollow, local private schools are bursting at the seams with more private schools planned,” he wrote. “Many parents have taken their children out of Wenatchee schools and are transporting them to Cashmere and Eastmont.”

Multiple Wenatchee residents reached out to and sent me the letter, which you can read in its entirety here:

Also included was campaign literature for Cleek and Smith.

It should be noted that Cleek has gone through this entire campaign without answering any questions about one of her main talking points, which is the fact she homeschooled her three boys. No one has asked if that decision was in any way connected to the fact that two of the three were expelled from Eastmont schools for their role in building and planting a fake pipe bomb at Eastmont High School in 2012. One would think that would come up during a campaign for school board, especially since both were still living at home and under her supervision at the time.

And, in an ironic twist in light of Smith’s recent reaction to two women speaking Spanish at a public forum, his flier is bilingual.

There is no website for “Wenatchee Values Alliance” currently, and no social media presence. The address on the letterhead doesn’t say what suite letter the Values Alliance is located in at 1250 North Wenatchee Ave, which is a strip mall that houses The Chicken Shack, Little Caesars Pizza, the UPS Story, and For The Love Of It among other businesses. All the other businesses or organizations at that address have a suite letter and there is no signage for the Values Alliance if you go to that location.

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My Two Cents

The irony of demanding transparency from a school district while also operating a hyper-partisan, conspiracy-laden shadowy disinformation campaign that is at best opaque and at worst illegal should not be lost on anyone at this point.

Time will tell if this clearly coordinated campaign by Chelan and Douglas counties’ MAGA zealots will be successful in changing the makeup of the Wenatchee School Board. And while this campaign should be considered a new high watermark for rancorous partisan politicking in a local school board election, it should not surprise anyone to see this level of civic discourse from candidates recruited and fielded by right-wing activists like Dick Black, Dale Peterson, Josh McPherson, Cary Condotta and Bill Sullivan in the future.

The last thing I’d like to do is pose a question, and that is: What kind of a reflection does Sullivan’s political activism cast upon the Chelan Douglas Board of Health and his fellow board members?

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