001Greetings and welcome everyone. We've got uh school directors on the line, WASDA board officers, we've got friends of public education, uh including Jim Kawakoski from the Rural Education Center, who's a panelist. But don't worry, Jim, I don't have you on the schedule to present unless you want to. So, it is Thursday, April 17th, and as always, I'm going to start with a people's acknowledgement and then give you a couple updates that you might be interested to know. Uh we acknowledge that our public schools and facilities operate on the traditional lands of indigenous peoples. As we engage and continue to engage in the 2025 legislative session, we remember that the lands of our state capital were cared for by the people of the Squaxen and Nquali tribes. We make these acknowledgements to open a space of
002recognition, inclusion, and respect for our sovereign tribal partners and all indigenous students, families, staff, legislators, and our board members in all of our communities across the state. My name is Marissa Rathbone and I am your director of strategic advocacy. And this is a big day because this is the second to the last in session live of the 2025 legislative session. We only have 10 days left uh in the regular legislative session. Your follow-up question may be, well, what about a special session? Because should we get too confident that it's going to be over in 10 days? uh my sources uh which include legislators uh lobbyists and other folks who have been closely connected to this legislative session and legislative sessions of the past say it is probable that we will finish on time this year.
003um that that they will siny die uh essentially end the session gavvel us out uh effective a uh April 27th might be at midnight might be a long night for us but uh nonetheless they are very intent on finalizing a budget uh by the April 27th uh deadline. However, that doesn't mean we won't have a special session later on in the year. a special session really could happen any time between now and the next legislative session. So the most recent rumors and just remember these are all just rumors is that um if a special session were to happen in 2025, it is possible that it would happen more towards um August September um after the next case load forecasts come out and they have to do some adjustments and or to be responsive to any
004fiscal or financial impa impacts that um impact Washington state as a result of decisions in the other Washington. So, there are other reasons why the Washington state legislature or the governor uh specifically would bring us back for a special session. But for now, it looks like we might have a budget and some new bills in 10 days. Before I tell you a little bit about those bills we might care about the most, I also wanted to give you a couple other countdowns uh just so you are aware and in the know. Um many of you are aware that uh my final day with WASDA officially will be um uh May 30th at the end of the next month. Uh so about essentially six weeks from today. I have six weeks left on the job and
005then I'm taking the month of June off and then I start as the assistant executive director of government relations with the Washington Association of School Administrators effective July 2nd. Dan Steele who is a close colleague and I would consider a friend uh in not just our professional space but also just in the life in general is retiring officially after serving in my role for 13 years long ago and then 15 years with WASA. Uh he is effectively retiring at the end of June. We will miss him and his expertise but we all get him one last time here in this space. He will be our final presenter at next week's in session live to give us an almost end of session budget summary. It won't be adopted yet, but we'll have a stronger sense a
006week from now for what's most likely to land in that final uh budget that the legislature adopts. I also wanted to let you know that in my place, Logan Noel Endrris, who was previously the strategic advocacy specialist, will be returning as the director of strategic advocacy. He starts effectively May 1st. and Logan and I will be overlapping in this role for the entire month of May so that we can do a soft handoff between myself and him and that he and Leavonne and I will have a full month working together to smoothly transition my exit from the organization. Although of course I will be working closely uh with Logan and with Leavonne in my new role. Um, I do believe that that transition will further strengthen the relationship between the school directors association and the
007um, administrators association because Logan and I uh, are close working colleagues and also close friends. So, I'm looking forward to it. I think you should, too. It has been honor of my career to support and serve you. I'm not saying goodbye right now because I still have six weeks to go. But in case this is all news to you, I wanted you to be aware that there are other countdowns happening besides just the end of session. There are other things happening in the world besides the Washington state 2025 legislative session. Hallelujah. So, uh, with that, I wanted to give you an update on a couple of the bills. Leavonne is running the screen. So, thank you so much, Leavonne, for supporting this effort today. I wanted to let you know that uh the final cut
008off before the end of session occurred yesterday. Um that's the actual sixth that was the sixth cutoff of the legislative session. So if you remember there are a lot of landmarks that have to occur in order for a bill to actually pass a legislative session. That's mostly good because we want to be sure that all 147 legislature and legislators and the constituents who inform their decisions get a chance to improve bills as they are filed at the beginning of session. So there are a lot less bills for us to grapple with than there were at the very beginning of session, but there are still many that are continuing. You will find the ones that are still in motion on WASDA's uh weekly schedule and bill watch that's hyperl in this agenda. Uh and we will
009provide at the end of the legislative session a full bill summary that gives you a list of the bills that pass, what they do, when they're effective, if they're funded or not, um if they have reporting implications, and then other supportive resources related to that. That's a resource we've provided to you year after year. and we'll do it again this year, but we won't be able to finalize that obviously until after the session is complete. So with the final cut off in the opposite chamber, it essentially means that every House bill had to have made it all the way through the Senate by last night and vice versa. of greatest significance to the work that we do um is that the Senate versions of special education and material supplies and operating costs passed off the
010House floor by the deadline last night. Now, neither of those bills landed in the place that we had hoped in terms of uh an the level of funding that was um most optimal. Uh the Senate had much higher aspirations for where uh public education funding would land at the end of this session. They fought really hard. The House held a different ground and had a different focus for most of the session, but we saw uh particularly um good support. I wouldn't say the best support, but good support from uh our representatives on the House side last night when they passed 5263. So, let's go ahead and talk about 5263 first. Um, we're going to pull that up on the screen because I want to show you if you're looking on your own kind of what
011you're looking for. Um, this looks a lot different than it was uh originally introduced. There are a lot more things that have happened obviously. So, things I want to point out to you in this little green box here. You'll see that it started in the Senate and it made it all the way through the Senate. There's those line I there's essentially a linear line that goes across here. It made it through four specific steps. It was introduced. It went into the policy committee. It went onto the floor cam uh calendar and it passed its chamber. So, you'll see it went through there. Then, it also went through the house. But, I want you to note that there are still steps left to achieve. This is not a done deal yet. 10 days isn't long in
012the scheme of things. 95 days are already behind us. It took 95 days for that bill essentially to make it through those eight points and it still has four more to go essentially uh to become law. Uh most importantly, it has to concur on the Senate side. The Senate side introduced it. The House has changed it. The Senate needs to decide it likes how the House changed it. Or at least maybe they don't like it, but they're going to accept how the House changed it. Don't know if that's going to be true or not. Some of the signs are pointing to yes. Uh but that remains to be seen. The House voted the special education bill as it was amended off the House floor 97 to0 last night. So there was uh universal unanimous support
013amongst the House of Representatives last night to pass the bill as it was written. If you want to know what the most current bill actually says, we want to be sure you know where to find that. Oftent times the most recent version of the bill in the bill summary is under this section called available documents. And you usually go to the bottom of each of these columns. On the left you see bill documents. On the right you see bill reports. But neither of those are the most current version. They haven't updated it yet to reflect the striker that was passed last night off the House floor, which essentially replaces the old version or the most the last version of the bill with the most recent version. So, if you scroll down under amendments, you will
014see that this bill has been amended several times, but the dates are most important. At the very bottom of the amendment list, you'll see that there was an amendment that was adopted yesterday. That's the striker as you see. Essentially, that means it replaces a lot of the language in the in the previous version of the bill. And if you actually want to read bill language, you can learn what it does from this. And um can actually click on that just so you can actually see um you'll see that a previous version of the bill said certain things, but this striker says everything after the enacting clause, which is at the very beginning. It replaces the previous bill with this language. So, the documents that are listed on that main page haven't been updated to reflect
015this very new uh adoption of a striker. So, this is what you're looking at if you want to get the nitty-gritty details. Some of you may not want to read all of this because it's 13 pages long and you're like, "What the heck?" So, I will tell you essentially what it there's a lot of things that it does, but I think maybe what you want to know the most is that it removes the 16% enrollment cap for special education. it increases the multiplier from its current rate of 1.08 to 1.16 and creates just a single multiplier uh instead of um two or three. So you've got one multiplier at 1.16. That's an increase. It also increases funding and supports for the early support for in infant and toddlers program and makes adjustments um so that
016you can do the quarterly draws for safety net. This is a $670 million less than the Senate's version of this bill, but because you um may have heard in the governor's presser last week, there was a question or push back on the intangible wealth tax um the house had to go back to the drawing board and make some adjustments. So the increase reflected here for the next bianium would be 245 million. And then in the four-year outlook, you'd have 170 million over four years. So, it's not quite half of what the Senate had originally introduced. Um, but um it's better than the most recent version of 5263, which which basically had it at a much lower multiplier and no uh removal of the cap. So, uh, whether or not this is the one that passes,
017um, whether the Senate, uh, reconciles or concurs with this version remains to be seen. Um, but we're looking at about a midway point from, uh, what we hoped the Senate would have and what the House introduced moving ahead. So, that's what we got for special education. Now, let's go ahead and pull up material supplies and operating costs. As you are likely aware, MSOC has been a bigger battle for us in terms of education and convincing that this is an important part of basic education and a critical element of ensuring that uh well essentially schools can pay their bills and keep their doors open and students educated. You'll note again that it's made it through eight sort of touch points, still has four more to go. Um but uh a little less success last night off
018the House floor. It voted out 85 to2 um and uh is definitely far from our favorite version of this bill which was from Representative April Berg which essentially moved it up um all the way to meet the gap. what this version of the bill again this would be under the striker um if we go ahead and go down we don't need to open it up but you've got adopted striker from last night on 416 Gregerson introduced um and if you click there you'll get the f full version of the striker essentially what this would do is adjust uh MSOC about 35 additional dollars per pupil it's ultimately just an inflationary increase um with an additional $35 per pupil. It moves it up from the current uh MSOC rate tound I'm sorry, 2016 and 1,614. Um
019and then an additional $4 for high school students. So it's not the that the the total of special education and MSOC is absolutely not the school funding rescue rescue plan we had hoped for. Um, as I said at the very beginning of session, which was probably really annoying to hear and maybe even more annoying to hear right now, is that we're going to ask for everything that we need. We are not going to get it, but we are going to get something that'll move the needle on funding to meet the needs of our students and staff. And in the interim, we're going to recalibrate where the gaps are, and we're going to come back next session and ask for everything that we need. That's not different from any other session that pretty much we've ever
020had. It continues to be frustrating, I realize. Um, and it's also the way that things go. Um, so generally I think we had great hopes for special education. We're not going to get there. Uh, but we are going to get a good amount. Um, that will help move the needle. I will also tell you we didn't uh hyperlink here uh but 2049 is a bill that we've been watching. Uh WASDA has testified as other on this bill. It has a lot of uh components but it's the levy LEA bill. We have a member adopted position that enables us to be supportive of it. Thanks Leavonne. Um it it has some property tax implications. We do not have any member adopted positions on tax related issues. So, um it would move the current 1% cap to
021a combined rate uh of population plus inflation with the tax within the taxing districts not to exceed 3%. Um so that's your state property tax and that's baked in to 2049 in order to pay for levy um levy lid lifts and the LEA uh adjustments equalization if you will. Um, so keep an eye on this. Uh, most likely a version of this bill, if not this exact bill, will pass. I think it's been scheduled um, we just adjusted our bill watch. Uh, it's been scheduled uh, to move again later this week. So, I I anticipate we'll see some version of this or the Senate companion move through the budget this legislative session. So, those those are some of the key bill issues. There are a handful of other bills that are on our bill watch
022that uh perhaps you've been watching. Uh 20150 is one that we've talked about. That's the aortionment shifts. Um it's a it's pretty much a done deal. There is going to be an aortionment shift in this legislative session. uh it likely will cap the alternative learning experience uh education programs at 33% um uh which we recognize will have huge implications for a handful of districts who have uh robust AL programs u but for many districts even more districts it will have implications for when you receive dollars from OSPI thereby and potentially necessitating that you um borrow money uh from your locals and potentially have to pay back interest on that. So, that also looks like a little trickery that the legislature is counting on to save money in this fiscal year um and uh create expense
023actually for school many school districts in this and future years. 5041 is the unemployment insurance for striking workers bill. We have testified and sent many communications in partnership with WASA in opposition to this bill. Uh we had heard early on that it was um a moving train and looks to be as such. Uh we anticipate this bill will pass and probably will land at about 8 weeks. We anticipate there have been decisions about will it be four weeks, will it be 8 weeks, will it be 12 weeks of uh unemployment insurance for striking workers and we anticipate most likely it'll land at 8 weeks. Um and then there are a handful of other bills um that you may be tracking. I'm not going to cover them now, but like I said, at the end of
024session, we will do a more in-depth analysis of distinct bills. I wanted to give you an overview of some of the most important ones that we've been tracking over the last uh couple um couple months actually. All right, question from Sarah Bentell. Could the passage of the new revenue bills heard in Ways and Means yesterday possibly support increasing the special education andor MSOC funding further, or are these amounts what we should expect at this point? Um, I'd be lying if I could tell you definitively a yes or a no on the answer to that question, Sarah. Um, but my understanding is that there is communication between House and Senate and that the House version of the bills that came off the floor, what the House is willing to do based on their understanding of the
025revenue proposals that are um going to be supported by the governor. The Senate may still have aspirations to move those numbers up. We will find out in the next week or so as we hear about concurrence or reconciliation. Uh but then if that happens, the House will need to agree as well and there will just be a continued back and forth. So at some point um the House or the Senate will need to relent um and accept where they're at. So, we'll see if the Senate continues to push on their tax proposals as a way to support an additional increase to sped an MSOC. I don't know the definitive answer to that, but we are running out of time and eventually the Senate will need to concur with less than what they had hoped coming
026into the session. It's an answer, non-answer, Sarah, but that's what we do, right? Okay. Any clarification on whether teacher strikes would qualify for unemployment insurance? Um, we actually have uh Dave Larson, we actually have in writing from legislators uh and from staff that they believe we've had some legislators tell us it doesn't qualify for teachers because they're not allowed to strike. But then the actual um office of fiscal management said that this bill would apply to striking teachers. So I have that in writing. Um our understanding is that uh unemployment insurance, this bill specifically would uh impact public education directly. Okay, good questions. Thank you. All right, you may have more questions about the legislative session um for the remainder of time. I would invite you to ask those in the chat and I will
027make sure we leave a little time at the end to answer them. Um, but I do want to start shifting your mind to what happens after the legislative session, specifically as it relates to uh, WASDA interim work and your role as a school director and engaging in your state agency and also at the local level as well as to get sort of an idea of what WASDA's work is for the foreseeable future and anticipating that legislative session will end. I was at a really excellent leadership meeting, uh, educational leadership meeting this earlier this week and, um, learned that the Enimaw School District had recently built uh, some professional learning from their staff around a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. And um, it is by a restaurant tour. The book was written by a restaurant tour by
028the name of Will Gera. Many of you are familiar with this book and this text, but some of you aren't. Um, and I found the conversation particularly uh inspiring and renewing from the perspective of everything that we do in the education sector as educators, as teachers, and as advocates really relates back to good hospitality. So, we're going to take a little time to watch this video from the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, and then we're going to um I'm going to lead you into how that helps to inform some of our work moving forward. So, thanks for your attention to this. I think you'll enjoy it and hopefully get uh a little bit of recharge from it. Why should you be spending any of your time listening to a restaurant tour? Listen, for most of America's
029history, we were a manufacturing economy. Now, we're a service economy and dramatically so. More than three4ers of our GDP is driven by service industries. Globally, it's more than twothirds. Which means that statistically speaking, if you're watching this, you and I do the same thing for a living. We might sell people different stuff, but we're all in the business of serving other people. And I believe if you do that through the lens of hospitality, you will be more successful. My name is Will Gada. I'm a restaurant tour and author of the book Unreasonable Hospitality. My restaurants over the years included 11 Madison Park here in New York, which in 2017 was named the number one restaurant in the world. Service and hospitality are not the same thing. Service is the thing you're doing. In my world,
030it's getting the right plate of food to the right person at the right time. Hospitality is how you make people feel when you do that thing. In the Bear, season 2, episode 7, it's called Forks. When Richie goes to work at the fancy restaurant, and when he gets there, he has no passion whatsoever for hospitality. But by the time he leaves, he is completely addicted to it. You see the light bulb turn on where Richie recognizes how fulfilling and how much nobility there is in providing graciousness to others. I don't care what you're serving, what you're selling, the way you make people feel will be the thing that they remember more than any of that. Now, why unreasonable hospitality? Well, you look across disciplines, whether it's directors or athletes or designers, entrepreneurs, the most successful
031out there are relentless in bringing the best version of themselves or their product to life. They are unreasonable in their pursuit. Unreasonable hospitality really it just means making the choice to be as unreasonable in pursuit of how you make people feel as you are the product you're selling those people. I don't care how good your product is. I don't care how strong your brand is. Eventually, and this is not a subjective statement. It is objective. History has proven it to be true. Someone will come around and build a better product or create a stronger brand. It's simply a matter of how long it will take. The only competitive advantage that really exists comes through investing consistently and generously into relationships because relationships take a long time to build. And when built the right way, the
032loyalty you get takes an incredibly long time to erode. And the best way to invest in relationships comes through hospitality. What I found is unreasonable hospitality happens when you can motivate a team of people to do three things. One, be present. What that means is caring so much about the person you're with that you stop caring about everything else you need to do. And these days with cell phones as perpetual distractions in our pockets or with our ever growing to-do list, it can become really difficult to slow down for long enough to actually listen to those around us. With hospitality, sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up. Number two, take what you do seriously, but take yourself less seriously. Way too often, people in customer service let their self-imposed standards get
033in the way of them giving those around them the things that will bring them the most joy. The moment you let your brand tell you that you are not allowed to do something that will make one of your key stakeholders happy, then the entire relationship has gotten out of whack. And third, if hospitality is about making people feel seen, the best way to do it is not to treat them like a commodity, but a unique individual. The best form of hospitality is not one sizefits all. It's one sizefits one. The greatest gestures are bespoke to the people you're extending them to. You give them the stories that they will be inclined to tell over and over and over again, doing your marketing on your behalf far better than you'd ever be able to do it
034yourself. At 11 Madison Park, we created a program that I called the Dreamweaver program. Every single night, doing countless little gestures that made our guests feel seen. One time a guest called us before he came into the restaurant to just warn us that his dad was more of a Budweiser steak and potatoes kind of guy than what we were serving. And so we had these fancy champagne carts where there were picture like a champagne bucket on a cart that we push over to the table. The dreamw weavers went around to every bodega in the neighborhood and bought every available type of bottled bud and we filled the champagne cart with that instead. The moment we pushed that up to this guy's dad, immediately he felt idiots. He was now in a place where he belonged
035and he was that much more able to enjoy the meal that came next. I talked to that guy's dad about a year ago because that guy was a friend of a friend. His dad didn't remember a single thing he ate that night in spite of the fact that we were serving some of the best food in the world. But he'll never forget how we made him feel when we pushed over that Budweiser cart. Get smarter faster with videos from the world's biggest. Thanks for listening to that. I hope that as you were listening um that you were making some connections between the work that you do in service to your community uh in service and support to the staff within your district. Um and I have been thinking about it in terms of the service
036and support that I provide to you um and also that I provide to legislators. And I I know right now at this point in session, it may feel like um hard to um re rethink about how to provide good customer service and hospitality given that we may not receive all the resources we need to provide the filet minan um and uh all all of the things that we'd like to have on the plate. Um, but it's also the most important time that we do it because this is not a time to relent or give up uh on the work that we do. I thought about how really good advocacy is is truly about um those first two elements or the three the of the three keys about being present. Uh during the interim, some of
037the work that I will quickly start to shift to do is to visit legislators in their own district. um ask them what coffee shop is their favorite and meet them there. Um and uh put my phone down and listen to what they have to say about what their priorities were this session and how they landed. Um, and then I will also want to invite them uh to go to their own school districts within their director areas, within your director areas to see boots on the ground um what uh what's actually happening in their schools. At this meeting that I was at earlier this week, I was there with uh Jake Digman Digman, who is the superintendent of the Oaksdale School District. And I remember during a regional meeting several years ago that I had the
038chance to go out um and get a tour of his school and eat in his uh cafeteria, his district's cafeteria. They have a scratch cook who made um uh homemade tater tot casserole not just for the students on that single K12 campus, but they also invite the um senior citizens from the community to eat with the students in the cafeteria at the same time. That was the best tater tot casserole I've ever had and it influences the way I think about Oaksdale and the customer service that they provide to the students and the community around them. All these things matter and they're all stories that our legislators need to know and to be able to um pull from uh in their hearts and minds. I also think a lot about advocac advocacy in terms of
039taking ourselves less serious seriously. This is really serious work. Sometimes it's heartbreaking and um disheartening um but also it's fun and joyful and all for the right reasons. And there is no time more important than the present to be advocating for public education. We need you all now more than ever. So I want to turn a little bit to what WASDA has in store for all of us as we look to the months and year ahead. So I'm going to um pull up the WASDA platform and remind you of your member adopted commitments um and interests as a part of WASDA. Who we are. WASDA is you um it's the members um and staff support your vision for what WASDA is. We use the term WASDA platform and I wanted to give you a chance
040to understand when we say WADA platform what do we mean? We mean that it's the equity statement, the vision and mission statements, the goals, beliefs and the positions all of which have been adopted by membership. Um, I'm not necessarily going to go through all of these, but I thank you Leavonne for pointing out that each of these has a dropdown uh for you to learn more about each one. Again, all of the words that you see here have been adopted by WASDA membership. That means WASDA membership brought language forward. Uh, there were um conversations, debates, uh maybe even some healthy conflict. Conflict doesn't have to be a bad word when it's done in a constructive and respectful manner. Uh but essentially adopted as a part of the WASDA platform. So we're looking ahead to the
041interim um and currently right now where proposals that can impact the platform are being considered. So I wanted to next go to WASDA positions. Um, there are two types of positions, legislative and permanent. They are all adopted by membership. They are all listed here in the positions catalog. Again, some of you may be so well-versed at this that you're like, well, dumb Marissa, we've been talking about this for a long time, but I want to recognize that there are incoming school directors all the time who are filling vacancies on their own school board. Um, as well as filling vacancies in leadership roles for WASDA as an organization. Um, if we go back up to the top, a lot of you will hear me say we have 233. How do I know that? If you click
042on that rank order uh link there, thank you. You'll actually see that this will list the 10 top positions as prioritized by membership following last year's general assembly. only legislative positions can be prioritized. So, you'll see here um if we were to scroll through, and don't worry, Leavonne, we don't have to. Um that there will be about 123 legislative positions that are listed listed first um in terms of how they were ranked during last year's prioritization process. and then all of the permanent positions will be la listed afterwards with no ranking because they're not part of the prioritization. The reason why I just wanted to point this out is we actually had requests from membership previously that the ranking order from the previous year be provided on our website and Shawn Duke, our communications officer,
043um was able to turn that around and get this posted so that we could meet that interest that you all might have about in 2024 which uh legislative positions were of highest priority to membership. But you'll see here, these are still member adopted positions, but they don't have a rank because permanent positions are not part of the prioritization process. So, if we go back to all positions A through Z, again, these will combine legislative and permanent together. They're currently alphabetical um ordered by title. But if you're searching for a particular issue area, you would just go to the keyword search and type in, let's say, yeah, early childhood. That's that sounds good. You can go ahead and click on that. Then any position that has early childhood either in the title or in the content
044of the member adopted position will pull up. I just wanted to remind you all of this tool because there is still time for membership to submit any proposals that are either brand new positions. In other words, it's not a topic listed anywhere here in the 233. Uh it's a consolidation, which means you see that there are a couple positions that are duplicated or there's overlap. Um and you could propose a consolidation of those positions. uh a retirement. So you see a position here that has already been achieved or is so out outdated it's not even relevant to the current climate, you could suggest a retirement. And then lastly, if you see a position here that needs from your perspective some enhancements so that it was had uh better explanation was clearer, maybe provided more detail
045or even specific numbers um in terms of threshold amounts or calculations and wanted to see that more explicitly listed in a position as relevant. Uh you could submit a proposed amendment to an existing position. Those are the four opportunities that a board has currently through April's position window to submit proposed changes to this part of the WASDA platform. Um, and uh just a reminder that that information has gone out to all, 1477 school directors through the WASDA member update. If for any reason you're like, "What are you talking about, Marissa? I haven't received that." I would check your spam folder. You would have received a message um at the earliest April 1st with a hyperlink to the form. Um and if for some reason you are having trouble accessing that, please please please do not
046hesitate to reach out. We will make sure that you have it. We want you to have every opportunity to engage in this work as possible. Um, but you also have to check your inbox and your spam folder in case for some reason your district has filtered out a mass email that goes from WASDA to all of membership. Um, there is a form in there that requires that any proposal you submit be board approved. So, you would have had to have brought that forward, had a conversation and a vote to submit any proposals through the WASDA platform. Okay, that's all I want to tell you about that for now. Um, and now I'm going to call back to the advocacy program. If you could go ahead and click on that. So, as you're thinking about the
047year ahead, um, again, there's lots of resources on the advocacy website here through WASDA. I want to remind you to revisit these as you're thinking about how to help your community better engage, as well as how to engage yourself. We're going to click first here on the uh, view and download the program. Uh, maybe if we can increase that size just a smidge. Thanks, Leavonne. Um, so you'll note here in the calendar that we're in the month of April and that has been entirely highlighted to show that in the month of April, uh, you have the opportunity, your board has the opportunity to submit position proposals. In addition, we will have one more in session live. Um, and like I said, Dan Steel will join us to do sort of a state of the state
048on how things are looking with the budget. And then um we'll have two more um I'm actually actually missing a green, my apologies here. We'll have two more in session publications. So we'll have one that'll be coming out tomorrow, the 25th, and then also May 2nd. And May 2nd will include a bill summary overview. So all the bills that pass this session with a highlevel what does it do and when do you need to do it by? Um, and then also a budget summary in a way that will unpack the budget a little bit differently than you'll see from some of our other education partners. So, you can anticipate that in May. That'll be a wrap-up of the session. We will continue to have Ledger Network meetings. Um, we will post the pre- amendment version
049of the general assembly handbook on July 1st. During the month of July, your boards should be convening to uh discuss the contents of the handbook and determine uh if you feel a need to participate in the amendment window. Your board can only propose amendments to proposals that are in the handbook. Um and that amendment window will occur virtually from August 1st through 7th. Then Wazda staff will take those amendments, reddraft the handbook, and by August 19th, we'll post the final version of the general assembly handbook so that you have a full month before general assembly occurs to review all of the proposals that will be in front of the body uh to uh debate on and potentially adopt. Another update that I haven't yet made to this um is that the general assembly this year
050will be a one-day virtual event. It will occur on Saturday, September 20th. But you might just want to hold the 19th uh to do any sort of lastm minute learning that you need to do. Maybe getting together with your fellow school directors to decide uh how your voting delegate will vote on your behalf. Although I would encourage you to be having those conversations in July and August and September leading up to General Assembly. While nothing gets done without the last minute, it does make things a lot more stressful. Uh so general assembly will be one full day. Um and it will be all virtually on Saturday the 20th. Then following General Assembly, you will have the opportunity as a board to prioritize the legislative positions that are most important to your board. And then that
051information will be curated amongst all of the boards that submitted priorities and that will be what informs WASDA's legislative priorities for the 2026 legislative session. Thanks Leavon. If we can go ahead and go back and just take a reook at the 2025 legislative priorities program. Um I think it was hyperl in the agenda. Yeah, thank you. Um the uh the priorities one more time back if you go back sorry go under advocacy program to legislative priorities. Perfect. Thank you. So you the membership uh submitted its priorities. The ledge committee reviewed what priorities were at the very top of the list. There were some very clear um way above and beyond special education and MSOC were of note there. Uh staff increases so increases to the prototypical and uh transportation formula. Essentially this body was looking
052for basic education funding this year. So, like I said, there was um there will be improvements in those areas, but we probably won't see much if anything as it relates to transportation. We certainly won't see enough as it relates to MSOC. Um we won't see anything as it relates to staffing and we'll see some improvements in special education, but not as much as you need. So if we think about the bianium as a two-year cycle, the budget is established in the first year of a bianium, which is this year, and then the legislature thinks of the next year as sort of a cleanup year, so smaller policy improvements, filling some additional gaps on the budget. um this body may want to consider. I won't I won't be your director anymore, but I will be over
053at WASA. And I can tell you that uh that organization is already looking at the 2026 legislative session and what its priorities will be and a continued conversation so that we can continue to build upon the education and advocacy we've been doing and also continue the momentum of the work that was started this session into the next year of the bienium with the hope that we can finally close the gaps on these priority areas. um might be something for this body to consider. So, just wanted to point those things out to you as well. Um I think there's one question um I'm just going to go back to before I move on. TJ Heler asked about the suspending of the National Board certification bonuses. Uh the answer to your question, TJ, is yes. the national
054board uh certificate certification bonuses. Um it is our understanding that they are quote unquote safe for now because the bills did not progress and the governor's the the former governor's budget had an override to it. Um however, it's not over till it's over. So, I would if that's something that's important to you and the educators in your district, as I assume it is, um that that messaging still be continued because the legislature is going to still be looking at ways that they can make cuts so that they can fund other things including special education and MSOC. And if it's not basic education, then I would say it's still at risk. So, um I don't want to unnecessarily worry anybody because it seems like there's been a lot of uh improvement made in this specific space
055education and the legislature backing off and recognizing the importance of national board certified teacher bonuses. Um but I wouldn't say that we're in the clear yet most specifically because it's not protected by basic education which means it's still at risk of being cut in order to make room for other things before the final budget is adopted. It's a great question. Thank you. Okay. Um I as I was thinking about sort of this unreasonable hospitality idea and investing generously in relationships, which is a direct quote from Will Gera there. That's what advocacy is entirely about. And I will just remind you that we wouldn't be having these conversations around increased funding for SPED or anything for MSOC were it not for the advocacy that you have done and the advocacy that we have done in partnership
056with uh other organizations including the organizations that are listed here. And we don't need to click on all of these, but I do want to remind you that um each one of these links goes to these organization priorities. So, they all had legislative priorities of their own on every single one of their priorities. There is overlap between ours and theirs. And it's where there was overlap that we see any movement at all. And I'll just remind you about how important that is moving into future legislative sessions. And then um uh just wanted to note also that the Association of Washington School Principles just this morning sent Leavon and I a really great resource um or a list of resources about some federal education funding information. I am not in a position to do a deep
057dive on this for you. Um, I haven't even had a chance to look at all of these links, but Leavonne suggested and I agreed that there's some really important information in here that may be useful to you as we start to turn our attention from this Washington to the other Washington and how decisions there might impact our districts as well during the interim. These resources might be helpful for you and your board in considering advocacy with our members of Congress. Um the uh uh WASDA has a federal relations network which I imagine will become more active now that we can turn our attention to some other things beyond just the Washington state legislature. And so if you are not on the Federal Relations Network distribution list and you would know that you're not because on
058Fridays I send out an email to everyone on our F FRN list uh an update about what's going on at the federal level. If you're not getting those emails, you're not on our FRM list, please email me and let me know you'd like to be added if you'd like to get those updates. Um, in addition, if you'd like to get this list of resources, um, I think that Leavonne was going to try to upload the document into the chat, and if for some reason you're unable to download that, just email one of us and we can send it to you. You can also just email strategic advocacy.org and uh, let us know that you want the federal education funding resources and we'll be sure to send them your way. I think this might be helpful
059as you think about next steps. Then as uh we go back to the agenda and thinking about investing generously in relationships and unreasonable hospitality, a couple areas that we as WASDA feel that we serve you in this way is through several other um resources including the student representative network. Just a little bit of a recap on this year. Uh we uh we met with the SRN this year. We had student rep elections at the uh just following annual conference last year. Carter Mcnite from the Southby Island School District has been the SRN chair and Aditi Marini from the Isiqua School District was the has been the vice chair. They have done an exceptional job leading a small but mighty group of student board reps who have joined for those monthly meetings. We have two meetings
060left this year. Um, and those meetings will be held on uh, Monday, April 28th from 6:00 to 7. And then I think the May meeting is still to be determined because Memorial Day messed our time frame up just a little bit. Um, but but we hope that if you have student board reps that they've signed up for the SRN and that they've been participating. And if not, we'd love to have them join us in these last two meetings of the year uh, to think about final work for this school year. and then what the work of the next group might be. Um, so that's one way for student engagement with WASDA. And then two resources in terms of hospitality that I would remind you we have is the WASDA Open Public Meetings Act manual to
061help you um identify or remind yourself how to engage with your community so that the conversations that are going on at your board meetings are well structured, organized, and provide an open opportunity for your community members to voice their perspectives to inform formed decisions at the board level. So, this is a resource that was posted to our publications website and is available to you to review and gives good guidance on how to structure your meetings in a way that builds relationship with your community and invites dialogue and conversation. And then lastly, WASDA's guide for school directors is a more recent publication thanks to the leadership of Dr. Heather Curl uh here as our director of leadership development um has created a guide for effective schoolboard membership and sort of walks you through your core responsibilities,
062your duty and responsibilities, um how you go about it. There's even a section here on how to constructively engage with your community. So, if you haven't had a chance to take a look at this or even review it with your fellow school directors, this is another way that you can be of service to one another and also be best positioned um to be hospitable to your community as one of their locally elected leaders. And then last but not least, uh wanted to show you that WASDA's week schedule and bill watch is available to you. Leavonne and I update that multiple times a week actually as especially right now as bills are getting added and removed. Um that there is a updated list. We just refreshed it this morning. So you will see that um finance
063will be meeting to I would assume pass 2049 um later this week. And then the rest of this document, it's much shorter than it used to be, I will tell you, lists all the K12 bills we've been tracking that are still in play. And so the next step for all of these bills will be most likely um that they've been amended in the opposite chamber. they'll have to go back to their chamber of origin for reconciliation or concurrence. So that means the Senate has to agree to House amendments and if they don't agree to the House amendments that they will sort of counter it. It's a little bit of bartering going on here with language um and they do that in a reconciliation process that doesn't require public meetings. So, this list will not be
064the final bill list, but there are some things that will be exactly the same as what's listed here and some things that will change. And those changes, those final uh bills will be listed in our WASDA bill summary. So, these are some of the last things I just wanted to point to as a reminder of uh the hospitality we hope to provide to you and that in turn we hope you will provide to your students, staff and community members. Uh we feel like helping you um helps them and that's our role for you. And I love this quote that I heard from Superintendent Sean Kerry, superintendent of the Enimclaw School District, who also talked about using unreasonable hospitality as a book study with his staff, that the thing that is going to keep us together
065is us. Um, none of this work would be worthwhile if it weren't for you, but it certainly wouldn't be possible without you. So, I just want to tell you how grateful I am to have to be in service to have been of service to you in this role and continue to do this work together um as partners in the interim and in the legislative sessions ahead. Thank you for all the work that you do. Please let us know how we can support