The governor has announced plans for sweeping budget cuts in K-12 education.  These will create some major challenges for our local school districts who are the recipients of state levy equalization funds.

This makes it very surprising that school Superintendent Mary Alice Heuschel is running for hospital commissioner at Valley Medical Center.  Her full-time job is as superintendent of the Renton School District. It seems that parents, taxpayers and students should be expecting her focus to be entirely on the school district in a time of crisis.

While being a hospital commissioner is supposedly a part-time job, the commission holds their meetings in the middle of the day.  The commissioner whose seat Mary Alice is running for was on record for 90 days of board activity last year.

Is this really the time for a superintendent to take 90 afternoons away from the job she is being paid to do and instead focus on the complicated job of running a health care system?

Dr. Paul Joos knows health care and has served the community well.  He is semiretired and has both the time and expertise to give Valley the true oversight it needs.   My choice this year is Dr. Paul Joos for hospital commissioner.

Eric Easterbrook

Kent