King County Executive Dow Constantine met with school officials and students of Northshore School District on May 14 to get a better understanding of challenges the district is facing.

“We have a strong interest, in a very narrow sense, in making sure we are doing everything we can along with the schools to help kids succeed,” Constantine said. “Moreover that is our mission, that everyone in this county will have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.”

Part of a tour of all school districts within King County, Constantine’s visit will help King County better address the needs of students and of administrators, such as mental health of students and ensuring that all students are prepared for adulthood, whether they succeed in regular classes or with alternative learning methods.

Cassie Rudolph, Inglemoor ASB’s Communications Commissioner for the 2015-2016 school year and a junior, thinks that Constantine’s visit was a great opportunity for students to address their concerns both to the school district and to other officials and she also hopes that the school officials will work with more students, on an individual basis, to ensure that school and home stresses are appropriately managed.

“One thing I hope to see addressed is testing anxiety and homework anxiety with students, especially in the IB and AP courses,” Rudolph said. “There’s so much anxiety. Mental health, I really think, is something is underestimated in high school; you don’t think about how much the pressure can be damaging to the person as a whole and I think that sometimes we get caught up in getting the grades, the test scores and getting into a good college rather than establishing a good life… they don’t always correlate.”

She also thinks that there is still a negative connotation with the idea of mental health due to the pressures and judgements from peers.

While providing adequate mental health where and when the services are offered is a significant challenge facing the government, it’s one that the county is already looking into.

“There’s a couple reasons for going on this tour of school districts. First of all, King County is provider of the justice system, provider of the public health system and also much of the human services system,” Constantine said. “A great deal of what we do overlaps with the work of the schools and, when kids don’t succeed in school, it’s very likely that they will end up in the justice system or needing the help of the public health system or human services.”

Constantine’s Best Start for Kids initiative hopes to address part of these struggles facing students and the districts that nurture them. Part of the package would be universal access to mental health, most likely through community based non-profits, to ensure that all students have the ability to communicate their concerns and have the access to learn the skills required to move them into a successful adult life.

According to Constantine, King County spends a full three-quarters of the budget on justice needs, such as courts and jails. However, he’d like to see more money spent on child access to universal early child learning, the ability of the school district to find and fund new teachers, universal developmental health for children and alternative punishments for students instead of suspension or expulsion.

Among the alternative means of discipline discussed were shorter suspensions, Bothell’s Teen Youth Court (where students preside over their peers to render punishments) and offering universal mental health screening.

The school tours not only benefitted Constantine and the school administrators, it was also benefitted the students, too.

“It think it’s encouraging [to have Constantine visit], I think it makes our voice important and that he’s interested in knowing a school’s perspective so that appropriate intervention can be provided,” said Inglemoor High School principal Vicki Sherwood. “We’re proud that our students want to be responsible citizens and want to be engaged in the political process, and in understanding what it means to be good citizens.”

For senior Mark Odendahl, it was interesting to see people in the county coming out to school and getting to meet them, let alone meet with county officials while practicing trombone in a school court yard.

“It was just weird cause we were out here practicing and we saw these people in nice dress suits, and I was like ‘who is this,'” said IHS senior Rebecca Connor. “It was so cool getting to meet him and learning he played trombone; it was a connection, such a connection!”

Three classes were visited, including IB history, IB English and the Yearbook class. Six students were invited to have lunch with Constantine in the library and five students practicing trombone were surprised when the trombone-playing Constantine came by for a quick chat.

“It was just so unexpected, but, wow, I thought that’d never happen in a million years,” Colin Rice, a junior at Inglemoor High School and trombone player.

For these students, who really weren’t expecting it, it was an opportunity to bend the ear of the most powerful government official in King County.

“It’s very heartwarming,… Music was a tremendously important part of my school years, it impacted a lot of my learning,” Constantine said. “To see those five young people out there pointing their horns at the empty playing field and playing their hearts out was funny and very enjoyable.”