Special district · Washington State
Finley School District 53 — School District, Benton County WA
Finley School District 53 is a school district in Benton county, Washington. It runs public schools and sets local school levies.
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About this district
It runs public schools and sets local school levies.
| Type | School District |
|---|---|
| Number | 53 |
| County | Benton |
| Voting precincts | 4 |
| Official name | FINLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT 53 |
| State district code | SCH030001 |
Source WA Secretary of State district and precinct files · as of 2026-08-12 · rows the district record
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Recent elections
Election records the state publishes for this district. Board members are elected in odd-numbered years.
| Year | Candidate | Votes | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Rory Bush | 557 | Won, unopposed |
| 2025 | Chris Knighten | 521 | Won, unopposed |
| 2023 | Dawn Senger | 595 | Won, unopposed |
| 2023 | Julie Bussell | 594 | Won, unopposed |
| 2023 | Timothy Goforth | 580 | Won, unopposed |
| 2021 | Cathy Krug | 456 | Won |
| 2021 | Tom Lafortune | 409 | Won |
| 2021 | Barbara Donaldson | 253 | — |
| 2021 | Lonetta (Netta) M. Docken | 233 | — |
| 2019 | Julie Bussell | 719 | Won, unopposed |
| 2019 | Tim Goforth | 714 | Won, unopposed |
| 2019 | Dawn Senger | 708 | Won, unopposed |
11 of the 14 races on record here drew no opponent. An unopposed race still appears on the ballot and still has to be certified. It is ordinary for special districts rather than a sign of anything.
Source WA Secretary of State election results · as of 2026-08-12 · 14 races on record
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Other districts in Benton County
See every special district in Benton County — fire, school, water, port, hospital, cemetery and park districts, and which of them share a number.
Source WA Secretary of State district register · as of 2026-08-12 · note districts in the same county share a boundary, not a government — this is not a relationship between them
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Common questions
- What is Finley School District 53?
- A school district in Benton county, Washington, governed by an elected board of commissioners or directors. It runs public schools and sets local school levies.
- Who runs Finley School District 53?
- Recent elected officials include Rory Bush, Chris Knighten, Dawn Senger.
Answers are generated from the district record above and carry no figure the sections do not.
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What this page will not compute
Each of these is a number a reader might reasonably expect. None of them follow from the records we hold, so we do not publish them.
- What it levies, or spends
- Special districts set their own levies and budgets, and those filings are held by each county assessor rather than in any state-wide dataset. Nothing here is a financial figure.
- Who currently sits on the board
- We show election records where a district name matched one, which is 54% of them. A matched election tells you who won that race, not who holds the seat today — boards fill vacancies by appointment between elections, and those appointments are not published centrally.
- Where its boundary runs
- The register gives a precinct count, not a shape. Two districts of the same type in one county can be adjacent or nowhere near each other, and this page cannot tell you which.
- Connected records
- A special district is not yet a node in the entity graph; no edge names one. Sharing a county with another district is an adjacency, not a relationship, and is said so where it appears. Component 08 arrives here when district edges are filed.
Cite this page
This is public-records reporting. Use it, and say where it came from.
“Finley School District 53 — School District, Benton County WA,” WashingtonIndependents.org, data as of 2026-08-12, accessed 2026-09-20. https://washingtonindependents.org/district/benton-school-53/
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Our tables, figures and notes on this page are released under CC BY 4.0 — reuse them, including commercially, with attribution. The underlying records are public records of the State of Washington and were never ours to license.
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Where this page comes from
Every figure above is read from a primary source and rebuilt on a schedule. Nothing here is modelled or inferred; where a source is silent the page says so rather than filling the gap.
- WA Secretary of State — district and precinct files
- https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/
- WA Secretary of State — election results
- https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/results.aspx