Legislative Update | Feb. 12-16, 2024

It’s Been a Grind

This week feels like a grind as legislators and staff continue working weekends and late nights to pass bills and meet deadlines that just keep coming.

Thank you all for indulging me as I continue to use track and field analogies for my legislative updates this year as I’m cheering on my son, Drew, in his last season of college track. Drew uses this phrase on occasion, that he’s just “grinding” away at practice and school work. Instead of a picture of Drew, and in honor of Valentine’s Day this week, I thought I would spotlight the hard work of Drew’s girlfriend, Lexie Keller, who earned a spot on the USA Track Team last summer. Yay, sports! (Another common phrase in our family…)

Legislators grinded through some long hours to meet their deadline of February 13 when bills had to pass off the floor of the House or the Senate to stay alive. Some bills that made it all the way to the floor calendars for a vote died because legislators ran out of time or the bills weren’t prioritized. Now the bills that passed move to the other side and the process repeats. The next cut-off date is February 21 when bills must pass out of policy committees to keep moving.

Budget

Collective efforts to push the Legislature to maximize state funding for K-12 education are happening in force this week. After Wednesday’s report from the Economic Forecast Council, a letter was immediately sent to all legislators from statewide associations urging them to allocate any additional revenue from this most recent forecast to the state’s paramount duty, K-12 education. Here is an excerpt:

“Due to underfunding, many school districts are being forced to reduce budgets, dip into reserves, and overly rely on enrichment levies. Some school districts are, or are considering, closing schools. Others have begun reducing staff, and several are being forced to reduce nonessential programs or seek loans from their county treasurers to meet payroll. 
 
The Legislature’s recent increases in state funding for K-12 education have been modest at best, while school district expenses have been increasing at a faster rate. When K-12 funding is adjusted for inflation, school districts have seen a net reduction in state funding in the last few years. Further, K-12 education spending as a share of the operating budget continues to decline, from a peak of 52% in 2019 to under 44% in 2023. If the final K-12 funding increase is at the level we are currently assuming, the percentage share of the state budget will further decline.
 
K-12 education is the state’s constitutional paramount duty—the Legislature’s first priority—and, at a minimum, additional available revenue projected in the February revenue forecast should be provided to help stabilize school district budgets and address the fiscal crisis facing our school districts.”

Take Action Now!

Please take action now and send an email to your legislators about increasing K-12 funding. This is an easy way to get the word out across our state that they must support our paramount duty. Click on the link above, and scroll down the page until you see the orange “Action Alert” on school funding. Enter your home or school address and then you’ll see a prewritten email that will go to your legislators. You can also add more information or anecdotes to this email if you’d like. 

Budget, Continued…

The Washington Research Council (WRC) published a good summary of some of the main budget bills that are still in play. We are pushing for additional funding in special education (raising the cap from 15% to 17.25%), transportation costs for special populations, increasing the prototypical model for paraeducators, and increasing MSOC (Materials, Supplies, and Operating Costs). We are also hopeful that the capital budget provides ample funding for school construction. WRC also just released a thorough analysis of the Senate’s supplemental capital budget that came out yesterday, particularly focused on funding for school construction. 

Here are links to some key budget bills:

• HB 2180 Increasing the special education enrollment funding cap
• SB 5873 Providing adequate and predictable student transportation
• SB 5882 Increasing prototypical school staffing to better meet student needs
• HB 2494 Increasing state funding for operating costs
• HB 1044 Providing capital financial assistance to small school districts
• SB 5789 Concerning the sales and use tax for school construction assistance programs

The Senate is expected to release their supplemental operating budget on Sunday and the House is expected to release theirs on Monday. We hope to see our specific request for increased funds for principal intern grants and immediate support for current principals in the House budget. 

Bills

Below are the bills that were heard this week in education committees. The restraint and isolation bill (HB 1479) passed out of the House on Tuesday but so far has not yet been scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee.

Several bills related to updating curriculum requirements continue to move including Holocaust and genocide education (HB 2037), Since Time Immemorial curriculum (<a alias