Guest Columnist: Lady Mercerdale

A Moment of Duty, Chosen Together

My Dear Gentle Islanders,

In unsettled times, one is often urged to accept division as inevitable, as though disagreement must harden into paralysis and differing convictions make cooperation impossible. Lady Mercerdale has never found such resignation persuasive.

On January 20th, concerned local Islanders gathered at 40th and Island Crest, stirred by anxiety over the current administration and the reach of ICE. At the same time, reports surfaced of immigration enforcement activity touching Seattle area schools. The timing was immediate and unsettling for many families across viewpoints. Schools are meant to foster learning, not apprehension.

Lady Mercerdale found herself considering a quiet but necessary question: Where does our school district stand when uncertainty presses so closely upon the schoolhouse door?

The answer arrived not with spectacle, but with governance.

In April of 2025, well before the present moment, the Mercer Island School District exercised foresight that is too often appreciated only in hindsight. Under the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Fred Rundle, Directors Dan Glowitz and Cristina Martinez led the effort to advance Resolution 739, Protecting the Right To Learn: Resolution on Student Safety, Privacy and Immigration Enforcement. Though not often aligned, they chose collaboration, emphasizing student safety, belonging, and clarity of responsibility at a moment when postponement would have been easier.

The resolution itself is neither ideological nor theatrical. It affirms that schools are safe places for learning, that any immigration enforcement activity must be reviewed by the Superintendent for legal necessity, that student immigration data will not be collected or shared beyond what the law requires, that families will be informed of students’ rights regardless of status, and that these protections will be communicated clearly throughout the District.

At the time, some dismissed the effort as unnecessary or merely performative. Others today are quick to dismiss public concern itself, reducing civic expression to spectacle. Lady Mercerdale observes that both instincts falter when preparation proves relevant and foresight reveals its value.

Public service is simply more effective when attention is given to tending common ground, rather than poisoning it with conspiracy or exhausting the community through endless searches for imagined adversaries.

Commendation is therefore due. To Dr. Rundle, for steady leadership. To Directors Glowitz and Martinez, for leading with purpose rather than posture. And to the full Mercer Island School Board, for demonstrating that disagreement need not preclude collective action in service of the community.

There was no grandstanding. There was simply the work of governing, carried out with restraint.

This is leadership at its most useful, when governance rises above ideology and service eclipses rivalry. This lady notes the moment not because cooperation is effortless, but because it is chosen.

In grace, truth, and perfect confidence,


Lady Mercerdale

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