This editorial will appear in Sunday's print edition.

Four years ago, we endorsed Dino Rossi for governor. This year, we are endorsing his then-and-now opponent, Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Both are excellent candidates. Gregoire has demonstrated her ability as governor, and Rossi is a very plausible alternative.

We liked Rossi in 2004 (and still do) for several reasons. One was the fact that he would have been the state’s first Republican governor in the 20 years since John Spellman left the office.

There is real value in shifting party control of a state’s administration from time to time. State agencies develop cultures that, over time, can settle into complacency, stagnation and unexamined assumptions about how to spend public money. These tendencies can perpetuate themselves without occasional shake-ups. The election of a Republican governor would have shaken state government up royally.

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This editorial appeared in the Christian Science Monitor a few days ago. Note the economist's estimate that the real costs of legalized gambling – most of which the City of Lakewood foists on others – outweigh the "benefit" by a ratio of three to one:

Again this election cycle, citizens will decide whether to introduce or expand casino-style gambling in their states. Casino resorts in Maine and Ohio? Slot machines – 15,000 of them – in Maryland? Round-the-clock gambling in Colorado? Backers promise a painless revenue stream for states. It's anything but.

A group of citizens in Lakewood, Wash., knows this only too well. They've collected enough signatures for a local ballot measure to ban "minicasinos" in their community, just south of Tacoma. A successful voter backlash would not just stop the expansion of legalized gambling there, but actually close four card rooms – a first in the state, and perhaps the nation.

The city warns that closing the establishments will cost $2.8 million in lost revenue, hurt social services for the poor, and essentially end neighborhood policing. But the ban's backers have come to the conclusion that the costs of legalized gambling – including gambling addiction, broken families, lost jobs, and drug abuse – aren't worth the revenues.

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We recently lamented the erosion of the school calendar.

Teachers are increasingly demanding more paid time to hone their teaching skills to deliver better student performance. That's leading to a shrinking of the school calendar as school districts, which can't afford to add extra days to the school year, request permission to borrow from classroom time. Last year, more than a fourth of the state’s school districts received waivers to deviate from the standard 180-day school year.

Now Education Week reports that the trend elsewhere is headed in the opposite direction.

Twenty-five years ago, the still-resonant report A Nation at Risk urged schools to add more time — an hour to the usual six-hour day and 20 to 40 days to the typical 180-day year — to ward off a “rising tide of mediocrity” in American education. Today, in city agencies and school district offices, at statehouses and on the national stage, leaders are engaged in a renewed effort to do just that.

It's not cheap. The Center for American Progress found that the annual cost of adding 30 percent more time to a school schedule ranged from $287 to $720 per pupil. But just imagine a state full of schools like this:

At Grove Patterson Academy, a regular public K-8 school in Toledo, Ohio, an eight-hour day and a 192-day year afford time for all 400 children to have 90 minutes of daily, uninterrupted reading, to study Spanish or German, to explore music and art, to engage in sports, and to work with mathematics specialists.

The extra time—the equivalent of 49 more days in the year—makes possible an interdisciplinary-learning approach that Principal Gretchen E. Bueter calls invaluable. Children do math problems in German, boost their Spanish and geography skills in social studies class, and learn graphing and numeric value in music. Teachers have daily planning time together to coordinate coursework across the curriculum.