SEQUIM – Bill Bentley is asking for input – while demanding one thing of this community.
“It’s really important to tell children we believe in them, and we need to tell them often and very early,” the new superintendent of Sequim schools told a roomful of business people at the Sequim Elks Club.
In his speech during Tuesday’s Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Bentley called on the whole community to educate their young people.
“They’re one-third of our population and all of our future,” he said, adding that in his experience, if adults – relatives, neighbors, friends – expect a lot, many young people deliver a lot.
In 2001 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a grant to a high school in the tiny Stevenson-Carson School District, where Bentley was superintendent from 1993 to 2004.
The grant enabled Bentley to travel across the region to observe what worked on other campuses.
“All of those schools that were really great have the highest expectations,” he remembered.
After 11 years as chief of the 1,000-student Stevenson district, Bentley went on to serve as assistant superintendent for almost three years in the Evergreen School District in Vancouver, Wash., where enrollment is 25,000.
