Local Resident Elected to Washington State Board of Education

Onion Creek resident Elissa Dyson said she believes small school districts bring special benefits to students. 

“It’s easier to focus on really helping kids, meeting kids where they’re at, and helping them achieve their goals because you’re not part of a huge system,” said Dyson.

Dyson said she moved to the Onion Creek area in 1984. Approximately a year later, she was approached to take up a position with the district’s school’s board.

“They had a vacancy, and they were looking for someone to appoint, so that’s how I got started,” said Dyson.

She said she served on the Onion Creek School District’s board for 40 years, until December 2025. Onion Creek, a non-high district, provides education for preschool through eighth grade, said Dyson. It’s also where she started to realize how special small school districts are. 

According to Dyson, small school districts typically have no more than 2,000 students; they may vary in size, but they have one “unifying” factor. 

“They all, I think, prioritize the individualization of education. There’s a lot of contact, not just between the staff and the kids in various capacities, but among the kids,” said Dyson. “One of the great things to see is older kids helping younger kids, kids being able to participate in classes that fit their preparation, their interests. There’s a lot more flexibility and a lot more ability to change quickly and try new things.”

Instead of quietly retiring from the Onion Creek School District’s board last year, Dyson said she instead ran for a position on the Washington State Board of Education, which oversees the basic education and graduation requirements for all students, including private, public, and charter schools. She won.

In her new role, Dyson said she is looking forward to being involved in the Future Ready initiative, which aims to update the high school graduation requirements for students to better incorporate technological and financial literacy and cultural competency. It also looks to streamline graduation requirements, making them more efficient.

Dyson said there were multiple reasons she chose to run for the state board of education, adding that there is a lot of “push and pull” within the education community.

“I think one of the reasons I was inspired to run was to make sure that our state board of education stands strong behind the laws of the state of Washington that require us to continue to provide care, service, and training, everything to all of the one million-plus students in our state and to not focus on certain groups,” she said.

Additionally, Dyson said she  ran for the board spot because it can be difficult to step back from something that one has been invested in for 40 years.

“When the opportunity presented itself, I thought, ‘this is a way I can hopefully continue to be involved in the conversation,” she said. 

The full board meets seven times throughout the year, Dyson said. Born Sept. 24, 1947, Dyson said she grew up in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington (UW) in June 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. After the Kent State shootings in 1970, in which the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four unarmed students and wounded nine during a Vietnam War protest in Ohio, Dyson said she was selected to be one of three former student leaders to heal relationships between student organizations and UW’s administration. She continued to work at UW for the vice president of business and finance before stepping into the position of administrator for the school of social work, where she worked for nine years. In that time, she said she completed her master’s degree in public administration and health administration. She also served on the board of directors of the Seattle-area human services agency Neighborhood House and as president of the Seattle-area chapter of the Society of Research Administrators.

After moving to the Colville area, Dyson said she taught personnel management at the Community Colleges of Spokane’s Colville campus. She said she was named the Washington State Director School Directors’ Association representative in the late 1980s for the state board of educator’s committee that formed the state’s Code of Professional Conduct for Education Practitioners. She was also a member of Washington State School Directors' Association’s (WSSDA) Small Schools Committee and chaired the Task Force on Small Schools between 2005 and 2018, she said. She received the Hero in Education award from WSSDA in 2018, the Golden Gavel Award in 2020 from the Washington Association of School Administrators (WASA), and the Community Leadership Award in 2025, also from WASA.

“The award is a nice recognition for those who exhibit leadership in the community,” Dyson told the Statesman-Examiner last year, after receiving her most recent WASA honor.

During that entire time, Dyson was on the Onion Creek School District’s board. Indeed, she and her husband, Clark Ashworth,  raised all three of their children, Sarah, Kate, and Gregory Ashworth, in the Onion Creek School District. Dyson said  Ashworth was a psychologist in Colville. He passed away last year. 

As for her own kids, Dyson said living in a small community meant there weren’t many school cliques.

“You’re all in it together, regardless of your history, your abilities, or anything. You learn to work with people and come to be friends and close with people from a lot of different backgrounds,” she said. “That serves, I think, everybody well to have that experience as you go out into the world because there’s a lot of different people out there.”