Meet the Board - Larry Swift, District 9
Larry Swift
Phone
(360) 491-8745-(Home)
(360) 878-0808 - (Cell)
Email:
Larry Swift(WSD)
Larry Swift(Comcast)
Larry Swift is retired after completing his career in education as Executive Director of the Washington State School Directors’ Association. (All local school boards in Washington are members of the Association; its purpose is to provide services to locally elected citizens to enhance their effectiveness in governing their school districts.) Dr. Swift and his wife grew up in Tacoma and have lived in Lacey for the last 32 years.
Having taught social studies in middle school and high school, his early career also included seven years on the faculty at Western Washington University. His senior thesis at Harvard College on “Politics and the Cambridge School Committee (school board), prompted his life-long interest in the forces that influence public policy in American Education. His training in the law and graduate work in school administration were the foundation for his work with the school boards’ association. There he managed the policy development process used by local school boards to assure compliance with the law and promote student learning.
He then guided the Association’s work with the state legislature for several years. For the last 15 years of his career he directed the Association and was substantially involved in the state’s school reform efforts in the 1990s. Appointed to the WSD Board in 2002, he has developed a keen interest in the learning challenges faced by deaf and hard of hearing children. He attempts to bring his prior experience to bear on the opportunity to radically improve the learning of deaf and hard of hearing children, regardless of where they attend school.