By DON NELSON
Editor in chief

Every student reads.

Every day. Even the kindergarten tots. And after they read at school, they read at home.

That’s the routine at Centennial Elementary School in Mount Vernon, where the expectation is the same for every kid. And Centennial has just about every kind of kid, including many who come in the door speaking only Spanish or Ukrainian.

The reading is always in English.

It’s impossible to get an appreciation for how thoroughly a reading-intensive culture can permeate an entire school building without seeing how it works close-up. I was one of 19 fortunate people who had a chance to do that last week when the Mount Vernon School District sponsored its third annual Principal for a Day program.

Ours was a diverse group that included some high-profile “principals” such as Skagit County Sheriff Rick Grimstead, Skagit County Commissioner Sharon Dillon, Skagit County PUD General Manager David Johnson and Skagit County Auditor Jeanne Youngquist. Each of us was assigned a school to attend for most of the day.

It was an eye-opener for me and Centennial co-principal for a day Lyle Herbaugh, retired from a long career in the military. Centennial Principal Al McDonald (as in “Hi, Mr. McDonald,” a day-long refrain in Centennial’s classrooms, hallways and playground) talks about his school’s emphasis on reading with such passion and commitment that you want to pick up a book yourself, just to show him that you read, too.

McDonald believes that reading is the foundation for everything else that happens at his remarkable school, including preparing students for the inevitable testing process called the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. WASL tests will be administered in the coming weeks, and Centennial teachers were helping students prepare.

While McDonald acknowledges that his staff “teaches to the test” to some extent, that’s not nearly all that goes on at Centennial.

It is a school full of challenges and rich with opportunity. Of the approximately 660 students (more than the school was built to handle), more than 60 percent are Hispanic and about 10 percent are Ukrainian. About three-fourths of all students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

After awhile, none of that registered — all we saw were kids being kids, in a program that requires discipline and focus. We saw animated teachers and engaged students in every classroom we visited (and they didn’t know we were coming). McDonald told individual stories about many of the students, with particular pride about how far they had come from where they started.

At an end-of-the-day debriefing at district headquarters, every other “principal” in the group came back with essentially the same observation: Whatever expectations or stereotypes they had were shattered.

Not that everything was just peachy keen. Some facilities desperately need repair or replacement. Many kids require special attention of a highly individual (and thus costly) nature. Cultural differences at home show up at school.

But the typical observations were how well-behaved and disciplined the students were, how on-task the lessons were, and how much parents are expected to be involved.

No Child Left Behind is the federal law that, for good or ill, looms over public education like the outdated image of the crabby old teacher with a ruler, ready to rap your knuckles if you got out of line.

McDonald has a different way of looking at the responsibility of educating. His mantra: No excuses. And that applies equally to educators and students.

Spend a day watching McDonald, his staff and his students at work, and you won’t have any excuse to knock what’s going on in local schools.

* Don Nelson is editor of the Skagit Valley Herald. He can be reached at 360-416-2137 or by e-mail at .