Erin Jones leads primary voting for state superintendent

Today is the final day to vote in Washington's primary, and according to Paige Cornwell of the Seattle Times, Erin Jones sits atop the field of nine candidates for state superintendent of schools with 24 percent of the vote.

That is great news for our students and our schools, and it puts a crack in one of our remaining shameful glass ceilings. Jones would be the first black woman to hold statewide elected office in Washington.

With 20 percent of the vote, state Rep. Chris Reykdal will likely join Jones on the November ballot. Reykdal has been an outspoken opponent of charter schools, but he said last month he would support charters as part of the public school system if they are upheld as constitutional by the state Supreme Court.

Ron Higgins, amazingly, is currently third at 17 percent -- the same Higgins who has said he wants to "stop sexualizing education" and would do away with gender-neutral bathrooms.

Jones and Reykdal have seemed to be the frontrunners for some time now, so this preliminary news comes as no real surprise, though I find it interesting that the majority of voters chose one of the other seven candidates. (More on them here.)

Hopefully enough of those soon-to-be-disenfranchised voters will swing Jones' way. My concern now is that it's hard to imagine someone voting for Higgins, say, in the primary, and then for Jones over Reykdal. We'll see.