About Us

Alicia Roberts Frank

Interim President

Alicia is an ELA LAP Coach for North Thurston School District. Previously, she served as a Regional Administrator for Special Programs/Dyslexia Specialist for ESD 113, for which she contracted with OSPI to provide free classes on dyslexia and structured literacy. She holds an Ed.D in Learning and Instruction and is Slingerland trained. She has served on the IDA board in Oregon as well as the State Advisory Board for Special Education and the Council for Exceptional Children. She joined WABIDA to connect her professional work with her personal passion of literacy for all.

Natasha Hayes

Vice President

Natasha Hays is a developmental pediatrician, now retired, who has evaluated children with a large variety of disabilities and has a special interest in dyslexia and dyscalculia. She now tutors children with those diagnoses. She is also the author of A Toss of the Dice (published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers), a book with stories about the children in her medical practice. She has also developed a program for identifying letters and their phonic associations, called My Active Alphabet. She is a strong advocate of establishing required evidence-based curricula for reading in the Washington State public schools.

Catey Roe

Past President

Catey is the immediate past president and has also served as both treasurer and vice president of WABIDA. She is the Director of Teaching and Learning at Westside School in West Seattle, which includes the learning support program. Catey spent the first ten years of her career teaching at schools for students with language-based learning differences, and is passionate about access to literacy for all.

Sandy Cato

Board Member

Sandy spends her work days teaching high school Language Arts in a Seattle area district. Frustrated by the lack of resources for her students struggling to read, she started seeking ways to better address the needs of struggling readers in her classes. Then her son’s personal struggles in the classroom led her to WABIDA. She holds a BA in English from Western Washington University (1996), an MA in English Literary Studies from Eastern Washington University (2001), and a Masters in Teaching from Seattle University (2001).

Sonja Bradford

Board Member

Sonja is a certified speech-language pathologist in the Seattle area. As a co-owner of a private practice in Mercer Island, WA, specializing in speech, language, and structured literacy instruction, assessment, remediation, and consultative services for K-12 students. Her interest in dyslexia, reading, and structured literacy began shortly after her first job working in public schools. She found that correcting speech sound disorders did fully support the language and literacy needs of struggling readers and students with developmental language disorders. This realization began a journey toward expertise in structured literacy and language disorders, directing speech & language services at a school for students with dyslexia and language-based learning differences, and to the WABIDA board.

Deanna Youngren

Past President

Deanna is a 25-year veteran special education teacher, having worked in Alaska and Seattle area public middle and high schools. Currently, she is a behavior support specialist in the Kent School District. Deanna holds a B.A. in History & Political Science, magna cum laude, from Vanguard University and a M.A. in ELL and Leadership from Heritage University. Deanna’s active involvement in her local union, WEA and NEA brings a deep context to WABIDA about the lived experience of public school educators and systems in our state.