Tim Sandford: Keeping it real in education

Those who visit Tim Sandford's Lake City High School office may find him working at any number of tasks, from going through music with his students to conferencing with other faculty and staff.

Or, he might be using his personal time to save his music program money by mending equipment with his own two hands. In this case, re-wrapping a percussion mallet.

"Mallets are expensive," the instrumental music instructor said as he spun blue yarn around the ball of the mallet. "It takes a lot of money to run the program. If I can save $25 by buying some yarn and wrapping a mallet over and over again, I'll do it."

Sandford has been teaching for 30 years and has been at LCHS for 20 of them. He loves his job and everything that being a teacher stands for. This will be his ninth year on the Coeur d'Alene Education Association negotiations team and his sixth as the chief negotiator, which requires strong convictions, a watchdog mentality and a firm understanding of how education works.

"I believe in teachers, I believe in public education. I believe that teachers should be able to have a say in what happens in education," he said, a smile forming on his face. "After all, we are the education experts. It would be nice if somebody would ask us once in a while what should happen."

Sandford was born in Kansas but moved to Wallace in 1965 and to Coeur d'Alene when he was 10.

"I grew up flyfishing on the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River," he said.

His father taught him many things, including to value people for who they are rather than "placing them on pedestals."

"You set yourself up to be disappointed because you put them up so high that when they do fail, and all humans fail, it's devastating," he said. "Let them be human and then you can admire them."

Sandford directs and teaches two jazz bands, symphonic band, concert band, pep band, marching band (which is part of symphonic and concert bands), string ensemble, orchestra, percussion- and movement-based STOMP, guitar and music appreciation. He graduated from Coeur d'Alene High School and went on to receive his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Idaho. He said spending time with his students keeps him young, and his friendly demeanor makes everyone feel at home in his office and music room.

Through the struggles for fairness and rights for teachers, the endless work to provide his students the best education possible and sometimes even having to stand up to his superiors when disagreements arise, Sandford has also not forgotten to have a sense of humor. As someone who enjoys gardening, he says he is a believer in "world peas."

"After everything is said and done, we all have to live together," he said.

Why did you become a teacher?

I think it's part of my DNA. My father was a pastor, my mother was a teacher, and then my former band director said, 'Hey you should try this, I think you'd be good at it,' I said, 'OK.' But it's kind of natural, coming from the background that I have, we were taught to value helping and being involved and making a difference in people's lives over going out and making the dollar, the buck. My father was a pastor with six kids and making $600 a month, so it gives you a certain perspective on life that others maybe don't have.

What's one of the most rewarding things about working with the students and your position at Lake City?

I think it's more the long-term relationships that come out of it, because as a band director, you spend four years with these guys and you get a chance to impact their lives and send them on their way. The return on that, on the other side, is very gratifying, you receive a note back from a student that says, 'Thank you for all you did, you made a difference in my life.' Or you form those long-term friendships with a student who is now graduated from college and on in their life and they return. I think that's really gratifying.

What's the most challenging, or one of the challenges you have working with students or being a teacher?

At least in today's society, at least where we're at right now, is staying focused or moving forward in a positive manner when there's so much push back and negative politicizing of teaching. We've had 10 years of, 'education is failing,' and attempts at reform from people who aren't teachers and now we have testing, testing, testing. It's sometimes difficult to keep your eye out there on the student when you have all these pressures from the sides pushing on you, I guess. As far as student-wise, students are students. Keeping them motivated, involved, and, as a music teacher, keeping them in the program, because sometimes, when they have (Advanced Placement) courses or this or that, they make choices that maybe you don't feel are the wisest or the best for them, but they do make choices.

What are some of the biggest changes that you've seen in 30 years of teaching?

The intrusion of politics into the teaching profession. And the intrusion of companies trying to make a buck off of education, like Pearson, testing companies and the Internet companies. It's not looked on as this educational institution anymore, but a place where they can sell their goods and their wares. The other thing is the cultural change in what we consider a stable family from 30 years ago to now. It's wildly different. Students come to school from a different place than they did then.

Has it been easy to adapt?

Sometimes, and sometimes not. We're still expected to produce the product, or to produce the good student. In my case, to have the good pep band, the good band and then you have all of these interesting pressures and home life that may not be conducive to a student being able to be their best, or AP courses that might pull your best students out, or testing regimens that take students from your classroom for a while and bring them back. All of these political footballs that get thrown at us. So, it's sometimes difficult to keep you on that straight course. You know what you're supposed to do, what is expected of you, but more and more things get put on your back as a teacher over time, it makes it a little bit difficult. It's kind of like if you took a long backpack hike and added a 10-pound rock to your pack every other mile. It just gets heavier.

How do you foresee education changing in the next 20 or so years as it continues down this path?

I am hoping that the country and our state is kind of waking up. The difference in this legislative session was remarkably different than it was last time. There seems to be a reawakening to the job that a teacher is asked to do and the respect that they really should have in order to do that. I'm hoping that pendulum is going to start swinging back. Culturally, I'm not certain, I'm not certain where our country is headed as a culture and that can make that difficult. I'm not real good at prophesying.

When and why did you become involved with the Coeur d'Alene Education Association?

I can tell you exactly when it happened. I was at a meeting with some of our state senators and representatives in this library here in this school. They were talking about the need to reform education, and one of the anecdotal evidences of that was that there was a 'rubber room' in New York for bad teachers, because they couldn't get rid of them because the big, bad union wouldn't let them be fired. And I raised my hand and opened my big mouth and took them to task about, 'I don't think there's a rubber room in the state of Idaho, and I dare you to find that.' After I did that, some of the leaders in the association came to me and said, 'You should probably get involved,' so that's how that kind of happened. They asked me to be on the negotiations team just as member and I spoke with my wife and we talked it over, she thought I should do that. Sometimes she kind of thinks, 'Why did you do that?' (laughs) I have to remind her, 'You told me to do this.' So that's where it started. I moved up, became a vice president for a while. I am a vice president, it's my last season with that. I ended up taking over chief negotiator right at the worst time, right at the Great Recession in the 2008-ish time. It's been a rough six years.

What does your position with the association require? Meetings, research, how many hours a week?

It just depends. It's kind of an as-need basis. There have been times when I've had to go in and sit and be a teacher's advocate in a dispute with an administrator in the case of a teacher who is maybe failing or had a breach of the code of ethics. My job is really to come in and make sure that that teacher is treated humanely, even if they may be let go. It's what you would call by law 'due process,' that they would receive their due process. Oftentimes, we're a help to both sides. Sometimes, we counsel people out. As far as negotiations, last year took a long time, it was a lot of hours because we ended up in mediation with a federal mediator. There have been other years when it was settled very quickly. It all depends on the circumstance, and whether or not we can come to a meeting of the minds at a faster or slow pace ... We do a lot of research, we look at the amended budgets, we look at things like admin salaries and how the district office is spending money, we compare that with previous years, we'll look at the history of how salaries have risen or fallen in the district. Last year we looked at a 10-year cycle to see how much our salaries really cost or what the percentage is of the district budget. What a lot of people don't understand is, they look at it and say, 'Gosh, the district budget is 88 percent salaries and budgets.' Well, that's pretty standard for a service industry. We're people teaching people, we don't make product, we don't buy product and create something. Our product is, and our delivery of that product, is us. Any industry that is heavily service, your salaries and benefits are that high. So, we have to make sure that all balances out. One of the things we are always talking about as negotiators is we have to make sure we keep the student, the teacher, the staff and the district, all of that in balance, so everybody benefits, or everybody has the same bitter pill, that it doesn't all fall on the back of the teacher or the administrator. There's a balance you try to strike, and that can be difficult. The district office, they have the way they see things, and it's their perspective and their priorities, and we have ours, and the challenge is to move everybody's perspective to the center so it's in the best place possible. Everybody has their best intentions, nobody wants to hurt anyone, students, staff, community, so you try to find that place. That's the challenge. That's the hard part.

What are your hopes for teachers in Coeur d'Alene?

With the state of teaching in the nation, we're leaving teachers in droves. It's not just a crisis, it's a catastrophe, it just hasn't fully come around to people's ideas yet that. For instance, the state of Idaho is 1,250 teachers less than there were in 2008, but we have 14,500 more students than 2008, and teachers are not coming here because there aren't enough teachers across the nation. My hopes for Coeur d'Alene, our district and our teachers is that we create such a great place, and it is a good place to teach, but we have competition now. We've got the Valley and Spokane, and salaries are higher there, we all know that, they're higher all the way around us. In order for us to stay on top of our game, Coeur d'Alene being the best district in the state, we've got to create that culture and such a good, respectful place to be where people can raise their families so that we keep that vibrancy here. That's my hopes.

On the flip side, what are some fears?

My fear is that we won't turn this pendulum back, and we will continue to allow companies to profit off of education, and that our students become second to that, that our teachers continue to leave in disillusionment, and that public education does end up collapsing. I'm afraid of that. I believe that public education is one of the cornerstones of our nation and the freedoms that we have. If it's allowed to collapse and go away and we end up in a system of have-nots and haves, then we're not going to be a free nation anymore. We're going to lose that. We've got some things to do, I think.

If there was anything you could help our community understand about the value and importance of teachers in our area, what would you like to say?

A couple things. I teach secondary, so what I'd like people to understand is, you know that teenager in your house that you struggle with to get them up in the morning and to do their chores and to get their homework done? Your teachers have 30 of them in a classroom, of those same kids, and to form that partnership between parent and teacher is really crucial, and to understand that the teacher is there to do their best for your child. There are people who have fears about a teaching association. All the teaching association is, is teachers. Teachers doing their best for students and teachers. There is no big, bad thuggy union out there. Gosh, even the president of the (National Education Association) is a former lunchlady who turned teacher who became the president of her state who became the president of the national association. We're just teachers. And then lastly, I would say that as you hear these voices that, 'Education is failing' and 'Those teachers are teaching this' and the disrespect that's engendered in that, remember that your students are listening, and what you say in your attitudes will come with them to school.

If money wasn't an object and you had no opposition, what's one thing you would change about education here in Coeur d'Alene or our school district?

OK, this is like the dream from the lottery. I would make it so that every kid, every student would have a chance to be involved in an arts education situation, from K-12, because the research is very, very, very clear that students who do that will be more successful not only in their academics, but in their life. I would give them the opportunity. If the kid couldn't get an instrument, we would provide it for them, we'd fund that all the way through and create those pathways to where kids could be involved in a solid arts education along with their academics. We have STEM education, it should be STEAM - science, technology, engineering, art (and mathematics) ... I was decent at math, but didn't like it. Not every student is a mathematician and a scientist, so we need to get those pathways where every kid has that opportunity.

Are you excited for summer vacation and what are your plans?

Of course I'm excited for summer vacation. Teachers need a break. You work extraordinarily hard for nine months, your nine-month salary is spread over 12. But my plans for summer, I am going to offer up my services to substitute at summer school. I have to take some education because I have to do that to keep my license as a teacher, I have four more credits to get before I re-license, so I'll be going to a summer institute down in Boise, picking up a few credits there. I plan on spending some time with my grandchildren, I'll be doing some backpacking and rejuvenating so that when I come back in and have marching band right off the bat and all that happens, I have the energy necessary to do that. Connecting with my family, going to church, you know, I attend Real Life Ministries, I'm a pastor's kid, you know.

Are you planning on teaching and staying at Lake City until you retire?

I think so. Yeah, I've got seven and a half years until I get to retirement age, so I'd be kind of silly to stop now. I've done 30, I can make seven and a half more (chuckles) so yeah, I believe so, if they'll have me.