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

Committees continued meeting primarily to move bills out of their respective committees while concurrently, the majority party in each house released their budget proposals as the week ended. The policy cut-off for bills was Friday, March 26th; the fiscal one will be the following Friday, April 2nd. Bills are stacking up for scheduling on floor calendars. Further activities will begin to focus on floor action, negotiations and compromises aiming toward an attempt to end on time on April 25th.

We reached the one-year anniversary of school closures to in-person learning this past week, and work continues to get all school buildings open once again. The ever-changing requirements and guidance for our schools keeps coming, among them being Governor Inslee’s announcement last Friday that requires all school districts to provide all K–12 students with the opportunity to receive at least two days per week of in-person learning no later than April 19. OSPI published a Q&A document that you may find helpful.

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

Public hearing and Executive Sessions continued this week as legislators dealt with various bills received from the opposite chamber. In fact, it appears that committees have sped up bills passing from Executive Sessions. This pattern will continue until the deadlines come and go for bills to have cleared policy (March 26th) and fiscal (April 2nd) committees.

After this Tuesday’s bill cutoff, the surviving bills switched houses and the committee hearing process started up again. This week and next week’s schedule of bill hearings are listed below. Work on the supplemental, operating, and capital budgets continues. The state’s budget outlook seems to look better each month and a third round of federal funding is on its way. But our work for stable education funding is far from over. The next major revenue forecast will be released at the March 17th meeting of the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council and the Senate and the House will release their budgets shortly thereafter. Our job is to keep telling our stories about what financial support we need from the state to educate each and every student safely.

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

Invasive what? At first, it seems like just a cool new pet or fun hobby accessory to add to the house. But sometimes exotic pets or pet accessories that are native to other countries can be destructive here in Washington state. For instance, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a notice this week about invasive zebra mussels that are not native to Washington but are hitching a ride on "Betta Buddy" brand moss balls that people frequently use in aquariums. The moss balls and accompanying zebra mussels become a problem when aquarium owners dump out their tank water and the zebra mussels go down the drain with it and into our environment.

This second half of session is just a repeat of the first half except each house is hearing the bills that passed the opposing chamber. And the process starts with committee hearings and as Milton Berle once said, “a committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.”

As we approach the final quarter of this historic and challenging school year, principals across Washington are navigating remote, hybrid, and modified in-person learning environments for students, educators, and families. We've helped assemble a panel of principals to join the League of Education Voters for one of their lunchtime "LEVinars."

This week was all about floor action in both the House and the Senate. Listening to the discussion among legislators as they discuss bills and potential amendments - even on Zoom - can be very insightful. Legislators are working hard to get bills passed by their next deadline of March 9th when they have to be passed out of each house to stay alive.

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

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.

Both Houses are focusing on ‘floor’ action. They have primarily voted to pass bills that have the support of both parties. Proposals that do not have such consent continue to be approved along party lines. And some bills such as those dealing with police and/or guns generate lively debate. Bills have to be out of their houses of origin by the end of the day March 9th. So, these floor debates will get even more spirited as the controversial bills come before the bodies.

Like many of you, my students are returning back to in person learning and I love it. This however, has brought a total different level of anxiety and stress to staff, students, and families. Which means it is critical that we, as leaders in our school, do something this month of modified “madness” to bring joy into our schools. March lends itself naturally to great opportunities of celebration to love on your staff between college basketball March Madness (Go Zags!), St. Patrick’s Day, or a few other exciting days I have included in this newsletter. I hope you can find one or two ideas to implement and utilize with your team.

As we know, the Legislature considers it a matter of public safety for its schools and staff to have current safe school plans and procedures in place to maximize safety for all students and staff. Districts and schools are required to develop comprehensive all-hazard emergency operations plans (EOPs) to address prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery strategies.