Effective July 12, 2010, I am resigning my position as an elected member on the Marysville School District Board of Directors.

Since my installation into the office in November 2003, I have been proud of my track record of service to the greater
Marysville/Tulalip community. Some of my accomplishments included;
• Ending a 49-day strike, and rebuilding a strong district-teacher union relationship during my first term of office;
• Planning and facilitating the removal of an anti-union school board, an unqualified superintendent and administration
from the district during my first term;
• Reducing the district’s overall board-of-director’s budget, and significantly reducing board travel expenditure in order to
place more resources into classrooms;
• Representing the district as a member of the Washington State School Directors Association (WSSDA) legislative advocacy
committee and National School Board Association’s (NSBA) Federal Relations Network;
• Introducing a motion to work on reducing the achievement gap during the board of director’s 2006/07 district goals and
objectives;
• Advocating and initiating plans for the establishment of subject-specific smaller learning community (SLCs) models
within the school district;
• Pushing the administration to adapt the SLC model in response to student input requesting more subject/elective choice.
Additionally, some my specific efforts to support our minority students included;
• Pushing for the re-establishment of regular joint Tribal/school board and City/school board meetings in the district;
• Seeking protection for foreign language electives (including Japanese, German, Latin and Spanish) within the district;
• Advocating for Tribal and transient military students by representing the district on NAFIS (National Association for
Federally Impacted Schools);
• Recruiting and convincing Tribal councilman Don Hatch to return to the district as a board member;
• Initiating regular discussion meetings with a special education parent advocacy group working in Marysville;
• Advocating for permission for Tribal students to wear traditional ceremonial cedar hats and regalia during high school
graduation;
• Initiating the removal of a confederate flag from school district presentations conducted by a district employee;
• *Advocating for permanent tribal representation by seeking a dedicated Tribal board seat on the school board
(unaccomplished to date)*.
Accordingly, I also regret that some of my initiatives to improve education in our district were rejected by the board. Some of
those efforts included;
• Increasing academic rigor by increasing the high school graduation requirement within Marysville to 24 high school
credits;
• Implementing improved accountability on district leadership by adopting a ‘performance pay increase’ policy requirement
for the superintendent;
• Establishing an annual $500 consumable materials allocation for middle school science teachers, in order to promote more
hands-on science experiments for district students;
• Implementing a school uniform policy across all district middle schools to improve discipline and equity;
• Developing an incentive program to reposition some of our most successful math and science teachers into targeted
schools in the district where they are more needed;
• Advocating to protect student health and the environment by transitioning the district school bus and vehicle fleet to
biodiesel and electric hybrids;
• Protecting and maintaining the A & T High School’s very successful ‘A, B, Fail’ grading model, which science teachers
showed previously to be improving student performance at that school.

In my seven years of serving the students, staff and Marysville community, I have learned much more about the challenges, and
occasional victories, of working and advocating for public education. In Marysville, the undeniable reality of high drop-out rates,
lower-than-average academic performance (particularly poor in the arenas of math and science), and the ever-present achievement
gap, demand that district leaders aggressively pursue the best available science to fully understand and implement solid tactical
strategies to address those challenges.
Finally, on my departure from the district, I would challenge the board and administration – if they truly desire to improve
their relationship in the Marysville community – to prove that commitment by adopting and installing a permanent Tribal
representative position/seat on the school board. I have discussed and pursued this goal for a number of years unsuccessfully, but
still hold firm that such a permanent position would only benefit the communication, engagement, and accountability between the
district leadership and the Tulalip students and community.

Respectfully,
Michael Kundu