In the 1970s, Federal Way schools were in turmoil.

In 1974, the district was wracked by a 20-day teacher strike that ended in a settlement that school board members charged was obtained by teachers using threats of violence. Then, from April 1974 to May 1980, Federal Way voters failed to reach the required 60 percent approval in a record 22 straight school levy elections.

A man who played a significant role in those levy failures was Boeing engineer, resident of Federal Way’s Lakota neighborhood and father of two, John Pancratz. Pancratz and Save Our Homes, the organization he led to fight the school levies, were reflections of a nation-wide revolt in the 1970s against property taxes.

By 1977, the Federal Way school district had laid off numerous teachers, increased student-to-teacher ratios, slashed its maintenance budget to almost nothing and reduced the number of elective classes available to junior and senior high students. Two elementary schools were closed. All eight of its junior and senior high schools lost full accreditation status from the state board of education on the grounds that they did not meet minimum requirements for offering a quality education. Many in Federal Way feared that loss of full accreditation meant that Federal Way high school graduates would find it very difficult to gain acceptance to college.

It seemed self-evident to members of the Federal Way school board and many others that, because of the anti-levy activism of Pancratz and his group, Federal Way students attended overcrowded classrooms in buildings falling into disrepair. Pancratz, however, steadfastly refused to accept blame. Using his own analysis of district budgets, he sought to show that the school board manipulated presentation of its finances in an attempt to show a crisis so it could get more money from taxpayers. Such a crisis, in fact, did not exist. The defeat of the levies, he claimed in a 1978 letter to the Federal Way News, had had “no visible effect on the Federal Way school district except the imposition of some economies that should have been imposed anyway.”

He further added that the levy defeats had cut Federal Way property taxes in half, with the results that “we can affords our home in Federal Way” and “the school district’s appetite” for taxpayer money had been reduced.

In a letter to the Federal Way News in 1976, he insisted that “the Federal Way school system was substandard, crummy and deprived our children of a right to a decent education long before the first levy failed.” He believed that one major source of the district’s problems was the introduction into some of its schools of the “open concept” and “continuous progress” methods of classroom learning. According to Pancratz, these methods created a vastly overcrowded and undisciplined classroom environment that negatively impacted academic achievement. He pointed to Federal Way school board member Dr. James Kenney as the “godfather and sponsor” of introducing into Federal Way “the rotten system of continuous progress. He has given the majority of our children’s future the kiss of death.”

As the late 1970s progressed, Pancratz and Save Our Homes focused less on fiscal matters in their opposition to levies. In a 1978 interview with the Auburn Globe News, Pancratz mentioned morally objectionable content in textbooks, lack of discipline in schools and his desire to see open concept classroom teaching eliminated as factors that prevented him from ceasing opposition to the levies.

He told his Globe News interviewer that he did not consider repeating his failed 1976 run for the Federal Way school board because he’d “stirred up resentment in some quarters” with his levy opposition. He added, “I can measure the success of my campaigns by the number of obscene phone calls I get” during levy elections. “It says something about the mentality of the people involved” on the pro-levy side.

Looking back on his anti-levy efforts in a 1994 letter to the Federal Way News, Pancratz professed himself satisfied. During the levy failures of the ’70s, “excessive administrative jobs were terminated, waste… ceased and the teacher/pupil ratio remained about the same. Essential bills were paid…”

However, after Federal Way voters began approving levies again in 1980, he believed the school board began hiring an excessive number of administrators, “never having enough to satisfy their bureaucratic desires.”

After the 1970s, Pancratz ceased active involvement in school district issues. He sometimes wrote letters to the Federal Way News on current events where he strongly expressed conservative views, including advocacy for school vouchers. He died in 2002 at age 71.