Dylan Souders

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Dylan Souders

Nonpartisan

Elections and appointments

Last election

May 20, 2025

Education

High school

David Douglas High School

Personal

Birthplace

Portland, Ore.

Religion

Christian

Profession

Education specialist

Contact

Personal Facebook

Personal Instagram

Dylan Souders ran for election to the David Douglas School District to represent Position 3 in Oregon. He lost in the general election on May 20, 2025.

Souders completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Dylan Souders was born in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from David Douglas High School. He attended Portland State University. His career experience includes working as an education specialist.

Elections

2025

See also: David Douglas School District, Oregon, elections (2025)

General election

General election for David Douglas School Board Position 3

Sara Ruth Epstein defeated Deian Salazar and Dylan Souders in the general election for David Douglas School Board Position 3 on May 20, 2025.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Sara Ruth Epstein (Nonpartisan)	52.8	2,805
		Deian Salazar (Nonpartisan)	28.5	1,514
		Dylan Souders (Nonpartisan)	18.1	961
		Other/Write-in votes	0.6	32

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 5,312
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Gregory Grisham (Nonpartisan)

Endorsements

Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Souders in this election.

Campaign themes

2025

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Dylan Souders completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Souders' responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Born and raised in Portland Oregon. Went through David Douglas school district K-12. Went to Portland State to play football and study. Came back once my football career was over and spent a few years coaching. Went into business for myself and focused on building small businesses. Did that for seven years until Covid shook everything up and eventually made it back into the school district after my daughter was born. The last four years of the school district have illuminated a lot of things that I would not have known had I not been here in person. After building relationships we’re both students and staff. I realize that I want to be able to help shape the education system moving forward because we have some discrepancies between our active legislators perspective of what’s going on in school versus the day-to-day reality.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• I haven’t unshakable desire to serve and actively better our community. I believe that starts with the younger generations and helping them develop themselves to become active leaders that will one day empower our community to thrive. I’ve spent the last 12 years of my life working on developing leaders within the community to come back and serve. I’m in the middle of my journey, and this is a great step in the right direction to help creating policies in school to support students.
• we need education reform, the way we’ve done things in the past cannot be the same way we do things in the future. Our students they have access to so many tools that can empower them to get any information they want. Our priority needs to be on teaching them how to solution seek and overcome obstacles. I do believe we need standards in our traditional education, but without adjusting our current trajectory we are not going to end up where we want to be as a whole.
• We need to actually inspect what we expect. We expect better graduation rates from different policies at the high school level, but I can tell you from personal experience. Some of our graduation rate problems are coming from much earlier in our education process. If you get to the high school level and you’re not equipped to be able to take a pre-algebra class we’re starting from such a deficit that there’s no real path to graduation. We need to create some formal standards during our Elementary in middle school path.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Students rights and education reform

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

High road leadership

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

Truthfulness and integrity. we have a lot of corruption in various forms of government. I believe we need people that hold people as a priority rather than their own self interests.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

a student centered focus as well as a true understanding of what schools are like today. Just because we graduated from public education systems or we have a child that goes to a public education system doesn’t mean we have a real grasp on what the average student is going through.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

I worked for my grandpa at the Oregonian. I did that on the weekends from 14 years old and then once I was in college out of football season, I would deliver newspapers seven days a week. So all in all I was around for at least eight years.

What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?

to ensure the best possible environment for students to graduate. That starts from kindergarten and goes through that senior year

Who are your constituents?

The entire district, there’s a lot of people in the David Douglas community that went through this district and there’s a lot that have students or grandchildren that are going through this district. So I aim to serve them all

How would you support the diverse needs of your district’s students, faculty, staff, and community?

I’m actively doing that the staff of color, leadership role. One thing that we’re focused on right now is empowering some staff of color to take on leadership roles in regards to both union leadership and liaison between administration and staff.

What are your views on financial transparency and government accountability?

I believe we need more transparency.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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