Brett Amidan

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Brett Amidan

Prior offices:

Richland School District school board Position 4

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Elections and appointments

Last election

November 3, 2015

Personal

Profession

Statistician

Contact

Personal website

Brett Amidan was the Position 4 representative on the Richland Board of Directors in Washington. First elected in 2015, Amidan won in the primary election on August 4, 2015, and advanced to the general election on November 3, 2015. A mandatory recount of the general election results was necessary due to the narrow margin between the two candidates. The recount determined Jill Oldson and Amidan were tied. Oldson and Amidan participated in a coin toss to break the tie, and Oldson won the seat.

Amidan ran unsuccessfully for the Position 5 seat on the board in the 2011 election.

Biography

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Amidan is a statistician at PNNL and holds an M.S. in statistics. He is native to Richland. He has four children who all attend or graduated from district schools.

Elections

2015

See also: Richland School District elections (2015)

Three seats on the Richland School District school board were up for general election on November 3, 2015. Positions 3, 4, and 5 were on the ballot. Because more than two candidates filed for Positions 4 and 5, a primary election for those races was held on August 4, 2015, with the top two vote-recipients advancing to the general election.

A mandatory recount for Position 4 was necessary due to the narrow margin between the two candidates in the general election. Position 4 incumbent Mary Guay did not file to seek re-election. Her open seat drew the most candidate filings in the district's elections. Brett Amidan, a returning candidate from 2013, Emily Allen, and Jill Oldson appeared on the primary ballot for the seat. Amidan and Oldson triumphed over Allen in that race and competed in the general election. Certified results showed just two votes placed Oldson over Amidan, necessitating the recount for the race. After the recount, the candidates were declared tied. A coin toss was held to break the tie, and Amidan was declared the winner.

Ronald Higgins, a 2012 candidate for Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction, initially filed to run for the Position 4 seat. He withdrew from that race on May 15, 2015, in order to run for the Position 3 seat, instead. He lost to Position 3 incumbent Rick Donahoe in that race.

Position 5 incumbent Phyllis Strickler saw the second highest candidate filings in her race and was ultimately unseated. Returning 2013 candidate Gordon Comfort and Donald Todd ran against her in the primary. Strickler and Comfort advanced to the general election, where Comfort defeated the sitting board member.

Results

Unofficial election returns showed a three-vote margin between candidates Jill Oldson (6,178 votes) and Brett Amidan (6,175 votes). After an official recount, the race was declared a tie with each candidate receiving 6,178 votes. A coin toss was held to break the tie and Amidan won the seat.

Funding

Amidan reported no contributions or expenditures to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission as of October 30, 2015.

Endorsements

Amidan was endorsed by the Tri-City Herald.

2011

Richland School District, Position 5 General Election, 4-year term, 2011
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Nonpartisan	Phyllis Strickler Incumbent	53%	8,087
	Nonpartisan	Brett Amidan	47%	7,168
Total Votes				15,255
Source: Benton County Auditor's Office, "Election results: November 08, 2011 General Election," November 29, 2011

Campaign themes

2015

Voter pamphlet

Amidan provided the following statement for the Benton County voter pamphlet:

“	I am a native of Richland, currently living in West Richland with children in Richland schools. I can effectively represent both communities. Being a statistician, I can provide an analytical background, helping to better understand demographic, testing, and financial data. Improving our analytical approach will improve decision making. Students are our number one priority; therefore parents should play a large role in the educational process and on the school board. As a WSUTC instructor I realize how important it is to improve the educational environment. Teachers should be included in the decision making process. Improvements can be made by relying less on standardized tests. I plan to use my stipend to fund a teacher reward program with nominations coming from students and parents. Please visit www.brett4rsb.com for more details about this idea, transparency, and others. I hope to facilitate ideas like these and more with help from the community and improve the education for our youth.	”
—Brett Amidan (2015)

Campaign website

Amidan provided the following statements on his campaign website:

“	Providing Education for the Less Fortunate Research quoted in the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell looked at the factors affecting education and class. What was found surprised them. While the data showed that the lower class children were generally less educated than the middle and upper class children (class as defined by financial terms), the research showed that all classes learned at similar rates during the school year. It was the time between the end of school and the beginning of school (summer) in which the middle/upper class learned at a higher rate. We offer school lunch at some schools during the summer in hopes to help feed those children that will benefit most. While this is a worthwhile endeavor, it is similar to giving a man a fish, and not teaching him how to fish. I would like to accompany those lunches with 1 hour of education before and 1 hour of education after lunch, at least a few days a week. The learning can be fun and it most definitely isn't graded. This should help bridge that gap. Standardized Testing and Common Core I remember as a youth taking standardized tests. Their purpose was to help us know what we were good at and what we weren't good at. They also told us what professions we could possibly be successful in. I believe this is where the value in standardized testing lies. Teachers should not have to teach to a test and they should not be graded by the performance of their students on these tests. Common core is the most convoluted way to do math. Even with a degree in Statistics and minor in mathematics, I struggle trying to understand it. Technology in the Classroom It's important that technology is used in the classroom. However, it is equally important that we make sure it will be useful and improve the educational process. A few years ago I attended a Richland School Board meeting when online textbooks were discussed. The Board encouraged the use of online textbooks. Only one problem, none of them had actually ever used them. With only 1 Board member with children in school, they had never tried to help their child with homework using online textbooks. Well, I had, and I told them about my experience. The online Chemistry book took about 5 to 10 seconds to change pages (and I had high-speed internet). There was no way to look at multiple pages at the same time, so going back a few pages for the equations and then back to the homework or examples, was practically impossible. There was no way to print the pages and they wouldn't even let you copy and paste any of the text. The best I could do was do a print page copy and paste it into Word. When I brought this up, many parents in the room mentioned their frustrations. One parent said they bought the textbook themselves because the online book was so bad. Next day, I purchased the textbook used from Amazon! Being Fiscally Responsible This is extremely important. Resources are limited, so we need to make sure we use them well. We are so fortunate to live in a community that is so quick to financially back bonds and levies. Still, I think we can be more transparent. How about letting people know what bonds and levies are currently in place and how much longer we should expect them? This information is not easily accessible. Also, we should always make sure that we have enough administration to run the district, but not too many. More teachers should always be the goal, to reduce class sizes. Also, I'm not a fan of extending contracts of administrators that have multiple years still left on their contract. Outside of professional sports, these type of contracts just aren't a part of real life, and we should not get ourselves tied down by them. Our experience with our previous superintendent should be enough to convince us that this is not a good idea.	”
—Brett Amidan's campaign website (2015)

See also

• Richland School District, Washington
• Richland School District elections (2015)
• Incumbency no guarantee of success in Nov. 3 school board elections (November 6, 2015)
• What happened in Nov.'s top board elections? (November 4, 2015)

External links

Suggest a link

• Richland School District
• Campaign website