001Hello and welcome to In Session Live. It is Thursday, March 27th. So grateful for all of you taking some time out of your busy days to join us to get a little learning in and virtual connection to one another. Um it is uh like I said, Thursday, March 27th. For some of you, uh today may be a special holiday. It is baseball opening day. In our house, we celebrate the St. Louis Cardinals. I I imagine many of you are Mariners fans. Uh go sports ball, whoever your team is, baseball, basketball, um or or whatever uh sport of your choosing. Hope things are going well. I'm going to talk about the legislative sporting events here um for the next hour. So, I'd like to acknowledge as we begin that our public schools and facilities operate on
002the traditional lands of indigenous peoples. As we engage in the 2025 legislative session, we remember that the lands of our state capital were cared for by the people of the Squaxon and Esquali tribes. We make these acknowledgements to open a space of recognition, inclusion, and respect for our sovereign tribal partners and all indigenous students, families, staff, legislators, and board members in our communities. I'm going to get to some of this in then stuff in a PowerPoint presentation. I have lots of resources to share with you today. So, I hope you will be patient with me as a single screen uh holder here. I will be um pivoting back and forth. So, um hopefully I don't give you a whiplash or make you dizzy, but it's all in an effort to be sure you have as
003many resources you need uh to sort of navigate this part of the legislative session, which can be a little bit confusing. So, you'll see are a bunch of hyperlinks. Um, I'm going to try to get to all of these just to walk you through how I use them as it may be instructive uh for you as well. And um with that, I'm going to go ahead and close this part of the screen. Uh the PowerPoint presentation I created is not linked to today's agenda. So if you are interested in having it um following this meeting, please feel free to email me and I will ask it your way. You will also note that I am looking to the side. I am with you, but um since I'm running dual screens here, I will be reading
004from some notes. So, I am still with you and got this up in front of you. Um great. Oops. Sorry. Told you. Told you I would have some technical difficulties. Okay. It is very hard to run this solo, I gotta say. All right. So all right. So with that, sorry about that. There are 31 days remaining, uh 74 days down of the 2025 legislative session. Uh we are at a point when bills are still being heard from their opposite house. The legislature uses the term house. Um although I find that somewhat confusing confusing because there is a house of representatives and there is a senate. So in some of the materials I provide for you I um I specify chamber because I think of the house chamber and the senate chamber as being the two
005distinct chambers of the legislative body. But um there's the opposite house or chamber policy cutoff which occurs uh next week, next Wednesday. And then the opposite house fiscal cutoff which occurs uh April 8th just following that. Then you have the full opposite chamber cut off on April 16th. So what all this means is you may recall at the beginning of the session uh there bills started in the Senate, moved through the Senate policy fiscal onto the Senate floor. Now they're in the House. So that opposite chamber process has to be concluded in its entirety by April 16th. There's another strange thing that happens. So, a bill in its original form, it makes it out of the, let's say, the Senate. Uh, it's probably amended by the time it makes it off the Senate floor and
006goes over to the House. Well, the House may have the opportunity to additionally amend those Senate bills. If they do, there's something called concurrence. Um, which means that uh or or reconciliation is another way they might describe it. What that means is that if the House changes a Senate bill or the Senate changes a House bill has to go back to the or uh originating body for concurrence or uh reconciliation. That means that the body will determine whether or not they accept the amendments of the opposite chamber. If they do not, the bill's probably dead this session because there's not a lot of time to move it back and forth. If they do, then uh likely it progresses through the next stages of the process. They don't have a lot of time to do that.
007You'll see a 10-day window in there. There may be an opportunity to continue to testify on bills, but you'll note that at this point in session, our focus and the legislator's focus really is on the state of the budget and um uh that's really where the biggest conversations are going uh going on right now. Uh siny die is scheduled for April 27th. We're still hearing lots of different things about whether or not there will be a special session. Um but uh right now the leaning is that they will do everything they can to have it wrapped up in a regular session and we'll be done by April 27th. I would say there's more of a 50% um sort of agreement right now that we're going to end on time. Now that was different last week.
008I would say it was less probable last week, more probable this week. It's going to change and it's going to change. Um, I'm going to go ahead and uh close this because I can't see the uh notes that I needed to actually give you some additional detail on this. So, please excuse my navigation here. So, what I wanted to share with you is that um the resource and materials that I'm going to provide have a lot of detail in them, a lot of information. Please don't hesitate to put your questions in the chat. um I will do my best to answer them either today and if I don't get to them I or I don't know the answer I will definitely hold on to the chat notes and provide you with an answer next week
009when we gather together. Uh but I think it's just important to note that things will change. We have a house and a senate proposed budget um that will um some of which will actually be in the final budget but there's a lot of things that will change in between now and April 27th. So again, please feel free to answer questions. Um, uh, I will do my best to answer today. Um, and none of what you see right now is final, but they are, uh, to be taken seriously, especially where we might have some concerns and need to bring them up. Uh, so we saw versions of both a proposed House and Senate uh, budget earlier this week. They were released on Monday. Uh we heard them in House Appropriations and Senate Ways and Means on
010Tuesday. Um uh we testified in both committees on that. We testified pro on the Senate side. We testified other on the House side. I'll dig into some of more of the details why as we take a look at actual numbers here momentarily. Um, something just to note about the bills that we saw, they are actually the same bill numbers that we testified on at the very beginning of session, uh, which reflected at the beginning of session the former governor, Governor Ensley's, uh, proposed budgets for both the House and the Senate side. So, what we testified on this week was what they would refer to as a striking amendment or a substitute bill for both of those. So, they took the uh original versions of the House and Senate proposed operating budgets and laid over changes
011that are reflective of the many conversations they've been having this session that include policy changes, cuts, and um potentially some considerations for uh revenue, although those are in most cases separate bills. Um the house generally speaking there they're I'm going to make some generalizations so just take them as um highlevel overview not absolute truth. Uh but the house generally aimed to focus on social services protecting food shelter and overall health of Washingtonians. So they looked at steep cuts and introduced just a just a little bit of spending for K12. um not nearly as much as the Senate did who looked at steep cuts also big tax packages on both sides. Um and in the Senate side added approximately 2 billion uh for K12 over the next four years. So again, I'm going to dig into
012the details and I'm sure you've seen some of this, but lots of different ways to look at this stuff. Uh both budgets combined cuts with new revenue options. Uh Washington state, as you are aware, is grappling with roughly 15 billion dollars in a some might refer to as a budget deficit, some might refer to as a shortfall over the course of the next four years. Lots of different ways to grapple with that. There has been some consensus in both bodies around cutting some of the child care subsidies as well as fair start for kids programs. That's obviously going to have an implication for K12. any cut that they make to any sector most likely will have some implication for um our the families in our state and the students uh in our schools. There's also
013some consensus from both of them on the transition to kindergarten program and I will get into the details on that. Uh like I said, the Senate proposed 2.2 billion in special education over the next four years. We like that a lot. it's almost the full slate of uh funding need um and uh not everything that we need for MSOC but something uh whereas on the house side they provide provided a nominal amount for special education and none for materials supplies and operating costs. Both of the House and Senate bills are scheduled for this afternoon in executive session to pass out of their respective committees and then conversations will continue through the rest of the session. Um we'll also note that some of the policy bills that are reflected if there is any cost or need
014um to uh allocate resources to them for implementation those will be reflected in the budget bill. So if a Senate bill is progressing you'll see uh it reflected in the Senate proposed budget. Those bills actually do have to pass um if the funds are to be allocated for them. And if the bill doesn't pass uh then those funds wouldn't be allocated in the respective budgets. Just things to note. So, a little bit of how we got to where we are considering the shortfall. Um, uh, that it is actually expected that revenue will continue to increase. Um, however, the revenue growth just did not match the commitments that were made in past legislative sessions. So, it's not as high as projected, but when we look at these numbers, it's it seems pretty grim. So, they're making
015adjustments based on the forecast from last year. uh that anticipated growth that we have not seen, which is why they're having to make adjustments right now. Uh so the big question for the next 30 days and probably for all of you in your own communities and homes is does there need to be more taxes in order to pay for the increases or to at least just um adjust to where we are and how many cuts also need to be made in order to make that adjustment. And all of this depends on who you ask, not just by politics, but also by policy. Um, some believe cuts would do it. So there are some perspective that there's no need to increase uh taxes in order to uh cover the shortfall. Other believes that taxes are absolutely
016necessary. My guess um although anything can happen is that we're going to see both. We're going to see uh revenue proposals, tax packages pass, and we're also going to see cuts to programs uh in K12 as well as in other sectors. You if we dig down into the details of the proposed operating budgets for both the House and the Senate, it will look like and truly is uh that they are literally scraping for dollars. Um some some cuts are much more significant, impactful for others. um but they're looking at any way I think to ensure that they don't have to raise taxes um and have the least impact to the classroom. This is the real opportunity for us to identify where some of those cuts might have real and lasting impacts to uh the K12
017system and to surface those concerns now. Okay. So with that, I'm going to get back to my PowerPoint presentation and that will enable us to look through some specific numbers which I know is very helpful to you all. Okay, play from current slide. Okay, so hopefully you all saw uh this um one of the things that was helpful for me was to take a look at the operating budgets at a high level side by side. And so what you're looking at S Senate supplemental is is what we're currently Senate and House supplemental. The supplemental year is what we're currently in. And then you've got the bianiums the next two years looking ahead. So there are some adjustments and increases made to the current year although not a lot um but some may be significant to
018you. Uh I got a great question actually earlier on like what does K3 class size reversions mean? This number is actually um cost savings. So these are unspent dollars. So this is actually not taking dollars away that are currently allocated, but rather um savings from unspent dollars in the current coffer. Uh also interesting that um I just want to point out that the only place in the overarching budget analysis where we see alignment between the House and the Senate currently is for student meals uh both in the supplemental budgets as well as in the next bianium. I think that's significant and more than likely is influenced by the interest of the governor in ensuring uh that student meals are uh covered for the foreseeable future. I'm going to get into some of these policy conversations,
019but I just want to note that there is a bill 20150 uh that would shift aortionment dates. I'm going to show you what those are on another slide. And while in this um uh spreadsheet or line by line item, you don't see anything in the Senate, seems like we're safe over there as it relates to significant date date changes for aortionment. There actually are um date changes for aortionment in the Senate proposed budget. It's not on their highle overview. It's buried more in the devil in the details. Uh we're still navigating exactly what that means because the dates are strange, but as soon as we have something definitive we can share with you, we certainly will. Uh going to talk more about TK here later. I think things to pay attention to are where you
020see this negative sign out in front, which literally means they're making cuts or moving dollars, being creative with where they put the money and when. Um, some of these will have greater and more significant impact for you than others. And we won't get into all the nitty-gritty details of these, but I am going to try to surface for you where you might want to pay the most attention by reaching out to your own legislators and letting me know what's most significant to you so that I can be sure I'm communicating that especially to our members on the fiscal committees. Also, just to note here down at the bottom, where it's red, it's a negative. Where it's green, it's a increase. It's pretty darn clear that the current version of the Senate operating budget provides us
021with the most benefits, most specifically around special education increases. All right. So, what does all this mean? Um, I just I took uh some of our partners did a really great job of doing some sideby-side analysis. And so I just want to give credit for a couple of these slides. These sidebysides come directly from uh the Washington Education Association WA's website. That website link is also included in the in session agenda. So you can go directly to their website. And then Leavon Williams, our policy analyst, took those numbers and put it in a spreadsheet in case that's how your brain works better. Uh I also provided a link to that. So uh these are directly from that information, but I'm drawing attention specifically to those areas I think you'll be most interested in. So again,
022to reiterate, House side for special education, there's a slight increase, but when we compare to the Senate, um it's really just peanuts. Um the imply the uh multipliers are increased in both cases, but again, you'll notice much more significant on the Senate side. Uh also more significant on the Senate side is that um lowers the safety net uh and also uh removes the um enrollment cap. Also allows for those quarterly payments on both sides here. And then material supplies and operating costs is fairly obvious here in front of you. On the house side, there's no investment for MSOC and there is um uh a little over 400 million over four years. This obviously doesn't get us to filling the full gap. Uh but it certainly is preferable to the House side. I don't imagine that
023in the final budget we'll see numbers any larger than this. So what we're asking for is for the Senate to hold strong in their position here and for the House to look to the Senate's position as the best opportunity to meet their um obligation for the state constitution's paramount duty. All right, moving on. Many of you have transitioned to kindergarten programs and there's been a lot of conversations about um what they want to do with that. Uh there are policy and program conversations going on. Uh what I will just generally note for you that the House and Senate seem to agree that they're going to pause on increases for now. Uh so that there would be no additional enrollment at uh the district level for the next bianium until they have a better sense of
024what to do next. Um the good news is is that it doesn't reduce your funding but it holds your funding at what it currently is uh at least for the next bianium. I know this says four years and um that is what's on the uh proposed operating budget plan. Uh we oftentimes just look at the next bianium because that's right in front of us and what you most specifically need to understand. and also when they come back in a a future legislative session, they can change some of those numbers. Levy equalization. I'm going to talk to you about the specific bills that address these, but you will note in the House version of the budget uh that there is a greater increase for levy equalization here. Uh I'll talk about the policy details. They're laid
025out a little bit more easier easy to look at on a slide. um less so on the Senate side. So the Senate really focused on special education and MSOC whereas the House looked more to Levy and LEA. Um and you see that number clearly differentiated here in the almost 610 million increase on the House side just the 26 million on the Senate side. One additional thing to note that they seem to both agree that there is a savings or a reduction opportunity by um reducing your LEA if your district has over 33% of enrollment in AL. I've got another slide that lays this out a little bit, but if you have AL programs, uh I would be continuing to pay additional attention to this. We brought this to your attention from Senate Bill 5772 earlier
026in the session. While that bill did not progress out of its committees. Uh they are considering this policy idea necessary to implement the budget as a cost-savings measure. Also to note that um alignment here for both the House and the Senate. This is part of the operating budget proposals. Um that the implicit price deflator is at 2.5 for the next school year and 2.6 uh for the 26 27 school years. Okay. Some specific bills to watch as they relate to the budget. I mentioned this earlier, but uh 20 House Bill 2050 uh is titled implementing K12 savings and efficiencies. Um, I don't know that I need to tell you this, but savings is another word for reduction. Uh, so just important to note that it does change your aortionment schedule. Um, and while this is
027in the House bill, um, so there's a it's in the House budget and there is a House bill that relates to it, the Senate does have a version of this baked into their operating budget. That's just a one-year shift. And again, we'll get you more details of that just came to our attention within the last 24 hours. So, there's really two parts of this bill. Um, a change to your aortionment dates or or your schedule and then the local effort assistant reduction of 33% in school districts with which have a student FTE count in their AL programs that exceed 33% of your total enrollment. So, two things combined here. vote both very um impactful policy issues probably to many of you if not most on the aortionment schedule and then to some of you based
028on your AL programs. I just also want to note before I move on to the next slide that in our um testimony to house appropriations in 60 seconds there's not a lot of time to bring up much detail but I did bring up the fact that by changing the aortionment schedule while the legislaturator is looking at that as a savings to them in a year it puts districts in a hugely difficult position um that in some cases would have to borrow money from their cities or counties uh potentially paying back with interest uh especially if they do not have um uh the the savings to cover that in in between phase um that this gap would be or that this schedule would be creating. So we did bring that up and one of the legislators,
029former school directors uh asked me for my testimony. I think uh she was hopeful to continue working on that from behind the scenes. Okay, so you saw this a little bit earlier just in the side by side, but there is a newly introduced uh House Bill 2049 um investing in the state's paramount duty. That's a great title. We like that to fund K12 uh K12 education. Um and you will note that in terms of how they're seeing their paramount duty in the bill title is to change levy uh equalization. So again, um lots of ways to look at this. Uh this will benefit some districts far more than others. Um for those districts that it benefits, we will um not as an organization be pushing back on that. But we do continue to remind our
030legislators that this will be helpful to some but not for all and that their paramount duty is to amply fund um uh basic education universally and equally for all of our schools. So, lot lots of details here. If you have specific questions about this, go ahead and put it in the chat. I likely will need to look into it more. Um, but you'll you'll note that these are the numbers currently um and are subject to change. Uh we brought to your attention a bill that did not progress out of its fiscal committee earlier but is also embedded in some of the savings language in the Senate operating budget around your electric vehicles. So, if you received an electric vehicle via grant or rebate, there is a proposal still on the table within the operating budget
031that would allow OSPI um to ensure that the depreciation schedule uh does not apply to the uh grant portion or the rebate portion of your electric vehicle buses had you received those through a grant or a rebate. Um Marie Sullivan, one of our colleagues uh in the education advocate space, has been um really uh at the forefront of making sure legislators know what the implications for this all. Uh certainly this has huge implications for future electric vehicle uh purchases, particularly if they're through grants or rebates. So there's a partnership, I understand, with the uh environmental community to put this type of idea to the side. And then um one bill just to draw your attention to WAD as an organization will not be involved in conversations around tax reform uh or uh revenue increases, tax
032increases. We don't have a member adopted position that provides enough detail that would indicate where we can and cannot weigh in here. But I do want to draw your attention to this one in particular as it may impact school districts uh related to payroll tax. Um uh an additional 5% tax increase on above the social security threshold for any employee earning over uh the 1,00 um 176,000 marker um for those employers with 7 million or more in total payroll expenses. So this will only be a portion of you but for those of you who it would apply to uh there may be some significant concern. Okay, that ends um what I provided in the PowerPoint and now I want to pivot to uh some of the resources that are listed in the in session agenda.
033So, with the philosophy of teaching you how to fish, I just wanted to show you um when the budgets are released, sort of the process by which we and our partners go through. Everybody does it a little bit different way and um here here's one way you might approach it or make it your own. So the most important website here is fiscal.wah.gov. And uh when we understood the u operating budgets were going to come out, we were able to find them under these links. So, if you go I'm going to start with the Senate budget resources um because from my perspective, I found them to be easier to navigate. Uh that doesn't mean one's better than the other just from my own learning. Um yours may be different. Um I started with the Senate and
034then um built from there. So two, so you've got the full bill 5167 here and this is the substitute bill. So it includes the language that they've proposed that we heard in committee this week. Then you've got a general overview document. This is highest level overview of what their operating budget is proposing not just related to K12 but to all sectors. And then the other resource I find helpful is the agency detail. So those are the three things that I look at and I start with the budget overview and then move to agency detail. You may have a different approach to it. There's no wrong way to do this, but for the benefit of your own learning, I'm just uh sharing with you the approach that I take. So, if we start with the budget
035overview, again, this is hyperl in uh in session live agenda. Um I will tell you this is this is nice. It's only eight pages long. That's why it's a good starting point. It's not too overwhelming. And what I really appreciated about this is it gave um not all of the information but a highle overview on where their maintenance level dollars were going. You'll note we are here at the top 29% of their maintenance dollars to K12 education. And then at the policy level they talk about spending. So that would be the increases in their budget that they are considering or have included and the exact uh sort of numbers in any bill that might be affiliated with that increase. So the largest spending uh item in the Senate's operating budget is for special education and
036it is funded at the levels of 5263 as we continue to advocate for through the session. This is does not come as a huge surprise because it's the um floor majority leader um Senator Jamie Peterson who uh sponsored this bill with the support of Senator Wellman who's a strong K12 advocate and the chair of the uh early learning and K12 committee. uh they really came together to make sure this bill progressed out of committee and through the fiscal committees onto the House floor with a beautiful floor debate we would call it, but there was really no debate. It was more of a loved love fest. Uh so it's not a surprise to see that that bill's fully funded here. Uh lots of other really important um spending uh issues here, but I'm just focused on
037K12. So I'll note that their number seven highest spending item is on material supplies and operating costs also aligned with 5192. So you'll see that there in the point4 billion range. So they're looking at a total increase of 9.7 billion. Then if you go here, uh the 10 largest savings or as we've discussed reductions or cuts you might call them um show negative balances. So this is where they're looking at making a savings. Okay? And you will note um just a an elusive K through 12 grants program reduction. Again, all kinds of different considerations here. Uh we'll kind of skim through what those are. Um you might have some questions about some of the specific a lot of these are um budget provisos that go to directly to OSPI which may fund actual programs that
038are related to professional learning or pilot projects in your own communities that support innovations in K12. Again, they're sort of all over the map and may or may not directly impact your district budgets or um even maybe uh your own program offerings. So, something to note there. Um then you'll note here revenue legislation. Uh the Senate has uh multiple bills uh and considerations over uh revenue increases in revenue as well as ways that they're looking at uh reducing um or or saving dollars. Okay. So that gives you sort of a highlevel overlook. And then I took um the K12 category here. I looked at totals for each of these and created that side byside spreadsheet that was embedded into the PowerPoint presentation I just showed you. I also have a more extensive document that I
039shared out um and also uh linked to the insession agenda. So this is where I took these numbers. These may or may not mean something to you. Some of them are really obvious what they are and some of them require a much deeper dive. So that's sort of the first high-level overview. So then you're like, "All right, I want to know a little bit more about what these things mean." So then you go into the agency detail and I'm going to click on that from in session live. I cheated. I already had it pulled up to the to the section I wanted to show you. You're like, "Oh my goodness, this is several hundred thousand pages." Uh several hundred pages. So, how do I know where to go? Um I generally just go uh search
040and find public schools and that'll get me to the area. So you'll note on the um Senate agency detail, it starts on page 235. So these numbers that you see here um are reflected in that earlier document. But in terms of policy other changes and reductions, then you're going to start to see some more detail about what actual programs are impacted. So this is a the next layer a little bit deeper. So you'll see um where there might be some reductions in the best program. Uh our colleagues at WA have great concern about the implications and impact for uh teacher prep programs as well as um uh some of the professional learning dollars that are uh allocated here being reduced. Um, then you'll see if there's not a negative in front of it, that means
041it's an that's they're increasing the amount or adding the amount. You'll see that bus depreciation amount here. Um, C expansion, that number aligns with the earlier document. So, I'm not going to go line by line for each of these, but just noting that each of them have a reason. Um, many of them are related to a bill. For instance, the education complaint process bill. That's the 5179 for which we've expressed to our legislators both on the House and Senate side. It's pretty significant concern about the uh process it creates. There was a fiscal note associated with that primarily for OSPI to manage that complaints process. It's not $771. It's actually $771,000. These numbers are in the thousands. So that money is allocated for OSPI to manage this process. Um other additional programs, Holocaust and Genocide
042Education, looking at a $400,000 ad. Um uh LEA online enrollment cap. So you're looking at the reduction there to the LE election here. learning standards. That's another bill. So, some of these are more significant than others. Whether or not they actually touch your classrooms or your buildings, um some of them are further away than others. Where we've asked districts to keep their cuts is as far away from the classroom as possible. So, again, lots of details here and the list goes on and on. And then you're like, what is that first one? That aviation academy. What I really like about the way that the Senate agency detail is laid out is they've got other policy changes. Number one, Aviation Academy. Then once you get through the the budget numbers list, they've actually got those provided
043in more detail. So you'll see a little bit more detail listed here and they are listed in order correlating with the list above it with additional um information. So, I find that extraordinarily helpful. And then if you really want to get into the details of it, you actually go to the budget bill and walk yourself through some of the hundreds of pages that are specified for K12. We're not going to do that here today. Um, but again, this you start at a high level and you're able to dig in a little bit more. And all of these are available to you on that fiscal.wah.gov website to review. So, I'm going to take this off. Um, I'm going to take a quick look at questions. Just see if there's anything I can help. Um, so, um,
044there's a question about sending the PowerPoint. Um, yes, I will send that to you, Martha. And then if any of you actually additionally want that, if you could shoot me an email, then I can just respond to it and that would be most helpful. Um, and then Jackie asked a question about the 2.25 25 billion over four years. Does that mean 55 billion per year? Um it's uh they they think about it in terms of a bianium. Uh so uh if if we're doing math on bianiums, you're looking at about 1 billion in this next bianium. So to start that's the 2025 to 2027 bianium. So essentially yes if the aortionment dates line up exactly uh as we're thinking about a billion per bienium. Great questions. Okay so now I want to give uh fair
045billing to the house and the house uh materials are just a little bit differently organized. However they include the same general information just organized a little bit differently. So, we've got the um operating budget budget summary for the house. Things just to call your attention to. Um they're looking at um more investments in um the social services areas and um just slightly less revenue generation. Um just slightly less about a billion dollars less than on the Senate side. If you think about what costs they're looking at, they're looking at K12 salary inflation as one of their costs. So that's the IPD uh or the colas as some may call it. And um I I thought this part was interesting just uh revenue legislation um coming through 2045 2046 and as you may recall from my
046PowerPoint 2049. So they are literally looking at it the levy equalization um the levy lid and uh LEA adjustments being um revenue which I think is just an interesting language framing. I pulled these numbers from this portion into that overall spreadsheet. So again some of these line items are not in the Senate. So, but all of these line items are listed in that overall document I provided. So, where there is something not in the House, but in the Senate, I just marked that with a zero and vice versa. So, I'm not going to go through any more of that. I want to show the agency detail for the house. Mariss, is there any way I can help you? You want me to share something? No, I've got to pull it up from my slides or
047from my screen. Thanks, though. All right, I think this is right. Okay. Um, so now we're looking at the agency detail on the house side of things. And, um, again, you'll notice that, uh, it's se it's just organized a little bit differently. And this all starts on page 248. Uh, they actually break it out into categories. So, this might actually be helpful for you in kind of thinking about it. So, they've got sort of the statewide OSPI programs where they've uh made increases or reductions and what those areas will be and then um and then they'll separate it into state board of education here um PESB uh back to general aortionment on public schools and where the um uh the changes are pupil transportation This is just maintenance level. Um, just as a note, none
048of the uh the House and the Senate didn't include any increases for special passengers in either of their operating budgets, unfortunately. Um, that was one of our um priority issues, but we didn't make moves on that. Um, so so it's interesting just how they do it differently. sort of Senate sort of lumps all of the issues together whereas the House separates it by particular issue areas. Uh so if you were looking for something specific uh it would be helpful if you went if you did the uh find if you try to find a specific word and then um that will help you get to a policy area. This one included special education. I I also think it's interesting that for all of these uh public school areas, the aortionment shift is listed as a comment
049because it will impact all of it regardless of the policy area and important for you to make note of. Okay, I'm going to stop share there. All right, I also wanted to show you of those side byside documents. So this is one [Music] um that we created that gives the full side by side. Again, this is in your uh hyperlinks. So, you've got supplemental side by sides, uh, the next bianium, and then the five-year outlook for both. Again, we like green. Green is green is good. And therefore, if we're looking at Senate side, um, significantly stronger investment in K12. Then other ways to look at this work proposed really great resource here. It's kind of every organization is going to have a little bit different take and a little bit uh different type of thing
050they're drawing your attention to. So if you look at um the side by side that they've created on their website uh you know starting with um total spending then focus on K12 they also include higher education. Uh WA has been much more involved in the uh tax increases or revenue conversations. They have they have more flexibility to do so. Um they're not a state agency like we are. Uh and also our advocacy work is entirely uh supported by uh member adopted positions and so we just don't have member adopted positions that address these types of issue areas. We have a very general position on tax reform, but it specifically uh points to the tax reform workg group recommendations that uh that tax reform work group has since been dissolved uh and doesn't have any layer
051of detail that would enable us to weigh in on these policy proposals. Uh certainly you as a citizen are welcome to have opinions about it and share those with your um uh state electeds. unfortunately were not able to do so. Uh then you get into some K12. Um one one pretty big shift since the beginning of session is that there were reduction considerations or uh proposals that would have at least paused or eliminated for the bienium or at least reduced the national board certified teacher stipens. uh as we see the operating budgets that came out th those considerations are no longer included in those operating proposals. So um uh those stipens would be maintained. Again, they're they're also like us looking at uh pauses to transition to kindergarten um and some other sort of policy
052level issues around SEB and pension. So this is a really great resource. I would highly encourage you to take a look at this. Provides quite a bit more detail um in a way that might be easier for you to look at. Okay, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to share one more. And this is uh the League of Education Voters. Uh they put out a sidebyside every year, too. So something that you can rely on for the future. Um they have quite a few issue areas they're looking at. So they're starting with early childhood, but then they're looking at K12 funding. What I like about the way they lay this out is they have the plus or minus signs. Um they make it real easy to sort of see the difference that for special
053education there is an increase on the house side. Senate is significantly greater. No changes for MSOC on the house side but 175 million uh in the Senate. LEA increases on the House side but not in the Senate side. Uh no um enrichment funding for charter schools on either side there. Then you're looking at some K12 student support. So this is more of that student centered policy level uh considerations. Uh again difference between both bodies. None of this is written in stone. So these are all areas for negotiation and this is just the K12 sector. um multiply this toward uh towards police reform um health care uh juvenile justice um mental health and social support services. So we are one of many important issue areas that they are grappling with uh across the spectrum. Okay, those
054are all the resources that I had embedded into in session live. Let's look at some Q&A Q&A. Lisa has some questions about um levy changes in LEA. Um I'm going to take your question and um I will be sure to get you answers for next week. Um but on the fly, I apologize. I'm not able to answer that right now. So with that, I'm going to make sure that I write down Lisa your question. so I can bring it back next week. Write down. Um, and I don't see any other questions in the chat. So, I think that's all. Oh, I did have one other thing I wanted to draw your attention to before we said goodbye. So, what can you do from here? Um, I will let you know that WASDA is working closely
055right now with WASA and AWSP to craft a statewide letter to our legislators imploring them to stay at the Senate levels. I don't think there will be um uh anything bigger than that. So, I think the the best we'll see is at the Senate levels, and my guess is it might be a little bit less than that or a lot less than that. We just don't know. It's all going to depend on the conversations that occur in the next 30 days, many of which will be behind closed doors. Um, we will see some things out in front, but my guess is we actually won't see a final budget proposal until probably a couple days before the end of the session. That doesn't mean we won't know what conversations are going on because we'll be talking
056with legislators. You'll be talking with legislators and letting us know what you're hearing. Uh in the meantime, we will be keeping the pedal to the metal, if you will, and we ask you to do the same. One way that you can do that, uh I embedded in here under other legislative resources the Tacoma public schools letter to the legislature. um and they um uh their superintendent provided a really great letter. I'm not suggesting you copy and paste it, but rather craft something potentially similar that um uh would have a similar sort of message or tone. And I just really like the way that this is organized because it's it it's literally a plea um for help. Like we are we are really in we're not making this up, folks. We are in dire situations. We're
057looking at cuts. We've already made them. We're looking at more. All of this impacts the student experience and outcomes. um they you know in in Tacoma they have been looking at all types of local supports from community organizations who are also experiencing their own sorts of cuts um and therefore our ask is that uh they are funding at the 5263 levels. I mean, so the so in the Wasa Wazda Wasbo letter, some of this language is somewhat paralleled, including an ask to keep at the 5263 levels. Um, an ask to look at MSOC in the full need, which was uh House Bill 1338, which had not progressed through the legislative process. Um, and uh, again, just asking them for um, a reminder about their paramount duty. So, this letter is also embedded. I would encourage
058you to think about what you might communicate and how you will communicate it to your legislators. We've still got 30 days left to influence them. Like I said, keep that pedal on the gas. This is no time to let up. Decisions have not been finally made. There is still opportunity to make a change. So, with that, it's 12:56. If you have any further questions, please reach out to me directly via email. Thank you for being here