AWSP Blog

Principals carry this burden of school-wide hope, but if they are lucky, they are not alone. While principals set the tone for the entire school, there is another group who are quite often working on hope from a completely different angle—our assistant principals. These unsung heroes are a direct line of hope to some of our most hopeless students. Our assistant principals have the opportunity to reach many of our students who don’t feel loved (at school or at home), who don’t have any sense of belonging in their lives, and far too often lack any vision of life in the future, yet alone where they might get their next meal.

Yesterday, the Legislature adjourned “Sine Die”. Over the past few days, decisions were solidified about final supplemental budgets and final bill language. Here is my description about this year’s legislative session based on the book Fortunately that I used to read to my own kids.

Today, March 1, is the last day to consider (or pass) opposite house bills (except initiatives and alternatives to initiatives, budgets and matters necessary to implement budgets, differences between the houses, and matters incident to the interim and closing of the session). March 7 is scheduled to be “Sine Die” – the last day of the legislative session. Work goes on behind the scenes to reconcile the two different budgets from the House and the Senate.

A collective “ugh” was felt by the education community this week at the Capitol as the House and Senate released their supplemental budgets. Education advocates remain concerned by inadequate funding and we are using several talking points from OSPI to help explain why districts are facing shortages.

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.