The outraged Tegan Ollie’s letter printed March 17 is a compelling example of why Oak Harbor School District might need to hire a communications specialist. Sure, it’s expensive, but somebody needs to communicate to the writer that Oak Harbor School District has one of the state’s lowest administrative costs per student, which would imply that there probably aren’t “extraneous supervisory positions” to be eliminated. (And the high school has two vice-principals, not three.)

I have spent many hours serving on various citizen advisory groups for the school district, and I have gained tremendous respect for the integrity of its administrators. Improving the education of our children is always their first priority, and they are very careful with our tax dollars. Many good things are happening in classrooms, and student performance continues to improve. If it takes a professional communicator to get this message across to all of the Tegan Ollies in our community, perhaps that is a sad commentary on our community, not our school administrators.

We need to gift these public servants with more of our trust and less suspicion as they make difficult decisions with limited resources and many unfunded mandates. At the very least, we need to have our facts straight before we criticize, and forego malicious name-calling.

Darlene Buss

Oak Harbor