AWSP Blog

Debates and voting also known as ‘Floor’ action have continued throughout the week. The pattern seems to be that for every three or four bills a chamber passes with bipartisan support, they then debate for hours on a controversial bill which ends with a partisan vote (28/21 or 57/41).

In this edition of AWSP News, we discuss state testing, addressing the mental health needs of your students, staff and community, some virtual “Retirement Readiness” seminars from our friends at Veba, a new OSPI sponsored statewide survey for students in grades 6-12, two new statewide networks for rural principals, a budget request of $10 Million to send up to 20,000 students to Outdoor School, the difficult yet necessary decision not to hold our 2021 in-person summer programs on our campuses, our US Senate Youth Program Washington winners, and a chance to serve a two-year term on the AWSL Student Voice & Advisory Council.

In the second video of "The Five 'P's' of Inclusion" Series, this video looks at how we can connect place to our understanding of inclusion. Drawing from Indigenous worldview, this video promotes seeing inclusive classrooms as more than locations, and emphasizes the building of community, identity and belonging. To see the first video in the series, watch this video about Presuming Competence!

The first fiscal committee deadline passed on Monday, and the list of active bills got even smaller as executive action by both the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Ways and Means Committee was not taken on some bills. The Legislature spent the rest of this week (and will spend all of next week) on floor action trying to get bills passed out of each house in order to meet the next deadline of March 9th. This is a much slower process in a remote session, so fewer bills will survive this session. We are watching to see which bills are still moving and will keep advocating to get bills of importance to the floor for votes.

Weekly special education and Section 504 resources from Abby Bowers, Capital Region ESD 113's Director of Special Programs.