NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, April 10th, 2020

Superintendent Chris Reykdal to address NPI’s 2020 Virtual Spring Gala on April 17th

As of today, we’re just one week out from NPI’s twelfth Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, which will be held vir­tu­al­ly instead of in-per­son for the first time due to the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Although we won’t be able to gath­er in per­son in Ren­ton for our tra­di­tion­al ban­quet, we will still have an infor­ma­tive and inspir­ing speak­ing pro­gram that you can watch from the com­fort of your couch at home.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we announced that State Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra would be our Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies, and that Red­mond City Coun­cilmem­ber Var­isha Khan would be one of our open­ing speak­ers. Today, we’re pleased to announce that State Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal (him­self a par­ent with kids in pub­lic schools) will be speak­ing. Chris will brief us on OSPI’s response to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in his capac­i­ty as the state’s chief edu­ca­tion­al officer.

This will be Chris’ sec­ond gala appearance.

Super­in­ten­dent Reyk­dal pre­vi­ous­ly spoke at NPI’s 2014 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, back when he was a mem­ber of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Representatives.

Chris Reykdal speaking at NPI's 2014 Spring Fundraising Gala

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Reyk­dal speaks at NPI’s 2014 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala (Pho­to: Lin­coln Potter/Samaya LLC)

As a mem­ber of the State House, Chris was a prin­ci­pled and con­sis­tent voice for tax reform, for the rights of work­ing men and women, and for under­rep­re­sent­ed con­stituen­cies with no lob­by­ist and no voice in our state’s capital.

As Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion, Chris has been a leader in the effort to secure a land­mark com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion (CSHE) bill for Wash­ing­ton’s youth — a key NPI leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ty for 2020 that was recent­ly signed into law by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. He is seek­ing reelec­tion this fall.

Chris has also over­seen efforts to mod­ern­ize Wash­ing­ton State’s grad­u­a­tion require­ments and lib­er­ate par­ents, teach­ers, and stu­dents from the scourge of waste­ful, high stakes stan­dard­ized testing.

We’re look­ing for­ward to get­ting an update from Chris. We hope you can join us.

Get tick­ets for NPI’s 2020 Spring Gala (and FallFest!)

If you have not yet pur­chased a tick­et to the gala, you can either buy a Vir­tu­al Gala Access Pass for $25/person, or you can buy com­bined tick­ets to the Vir­tu­al Gala and FallFest for $100 (Indi­vid­ual) or $150 (House­hold). The choice is yours.

You’ll save $25 on admis­sion to both events by pur­chas­ing an Indi­vid­ual Tick­et and save $50 or more on admis­sion by pur­chas­ing a House­hold ticket.

Please note that the Vir­tu­al Gala will not be pub­licly livestreamed. To par­tic­i­pate, you must either have a Vir­tu­al Gala Access Pass or a Gala/FallFest tick­et. All pro­ceeds from the Vir­tu­al Gala and FallFest will ben­e­fit the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s essen­tial research and advocacy.

If you have ques­tions, please use our con­tact form to get in touch.

Thanks for your sup­port of NPI’s work, it’s deeply appreciated.

We hope to see you — vir­tu­al­ly! — next week.

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