It’s been quite a while since I’ve read an article in the Mirror on the Public Academy, Federal Way school district’s rose among the thorns.

The Federal Way Public Academy, FWPA, has been in existence for over 16 years. Anyone can go to FWPA. For those that want their children to have a college preparatory experience, please familiarize yourself with the district’s “choice” application that is available every spring. After FWPA, families and their children decide to participate in Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or Cambridge programs in high school. Some choose the Running Start program at Highline College or Green River Community College.

These children, from all walks of life, rich and poor, from a multitude of nationalities and races, all rise to the academic standards of this fine school.

My children were part of this experience. From the foundation garnered at FWPA, I now have a Husky graduate, a Cougar graduate, and another that was just accepted into the Milgard School of Business at UW Tacoma. Other graduates have diplomas from Harvard, Berkley, Hillsdale, and Stanford, to name just a few.

We, like so many other fine Federal Way families, gave their hearts and souls to make FWPA work. FWPA works because everybody, all the families and all the staff, contribute to our children’s success.

The results speak for themselves. The test scores at FWPA compete with the high-end private schools in our state as well as others. Kids work hard. Teachers work even harder providing opportunities for all children that want to succeed.

Every year there is a waiting list to get in. The total of the waiting list nears the enrollment of the school, 300. Many school board members and superintendents have come and gone during the time FWPA has been in existence. So if FWPA is such a success and there is continually a waiting list to get in, why is it that this success hasn’t been replicated? Why isn’t this model for successful education being studied for other school districts in this state and others?

The elite universities with their elite PhDs publish articles on the latest theories on what it takes to make education successful. School boards and superintendents study the results and implement the findings, sometimes at a great cost to the communities they serve. What has this top-down approach done to education?

Yet a success story thrives in an old check-printing building. It’s not the newest building. It’s not the prettiest. But it’s a glowing example of what education could be if given the freedom to discuss in an open dialogue the merits of a non-Ivy-League, old-school approach for the future of our children.

I know this question has been asked before, but let me ask it again of our new school board and superintendent: If the goal of education is to educate our children and prepare them for the future, isn’t it time to think about opening a new FWPA?

What would happen if the parents of past FWPA graduates got together with current FWPA parents and those groups joined the parents that now sit on the waiting list hoping to get into FWPA next year? Could advocacy force the current board and superintendent to start the planning process? Could advocacy check the bureaucratic quagmire of the latest theory at the front door so that education could succeed? Are we as a community ready to support this endeavor?

George Adams, Federal Way