001it is Thursday January 14th you are here for wda first in session live of the 2025 legislative session we like to start with a people's acknowledgement that says we acknowledge that our public schools and facilit Facilities operate on the traditional lands of indigenous peoples as we begin this 2025 legislative session we remember that the lands of our state capital were cared for by the people of the squaxin and the squali tribes we make these acknowledgements to open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for our Sovereign tribal partners and all indigenous students family staff legislators and board members in our communities I also like to start with a little bit of a tidbit of information so that you are quote unquote in the no uh there is a new Washington State Legislature online website if
002you haven't had a chance to peruse it I would highly encourage you to do so uh there is a link here that takes you directly to the committee dates agendas and materials uh I would recommend that you bookmark it for easy finding it is one of the places that I go to online multiple times per day a couple things for our agenda today I'm going to share some resources that I think are important for you to just keep in the back of your mind as you navigate the days and weeks ahead uh we have our executive director uh giving you a presentation that was also shared with the legislature this week the wasda board president and I will be sharing a little bit about the context for the 10 and now 4 days ahead of
003us in the OM sorry no less than that 101 days ahead of us every day matters uh in the 2025 legislative session then I want to talk about a couple bills from this past week as well as some important bills next week uh I'll get into a little bit of the policy detail around it but mostly wanted to alert you to them so that you and your school board members and other related staff could dive in we'll also go over some of the resources that are available to you um both from the Washington State Legislature as well as from wasda so with that I'm going to go ahead and start from the top I wanted to let you know that there is a 2025 legislative roster now available that is almost entirely updated to reflect
004current legislator names and email addresses as well as their legislative assistance names and email addresses uh I'm not going to click on this link here uh because I'm not going to go through the list itself I just wanted you to know that it is available this has been a highly sought-after resource uh from many of you and it's um finally from the for the most part been updated to reflect all the changes that we know have occurred for 2025 I would just remind you that as you're considering how to communicate with your legislators when you do uh in in email in particular or even when you make a phone call that you're always including the Legislative Assistant as part of that communication that's imperative during the session if you actually want your Communications to be
005read not because legislators are ignoring you just because the volume of communication coming their way is so immense that they absolutely need support on that so your LA's is are your legislative assistants or LA's are usually your first point of contact for communicating with l legislators I also wanted to point you to on the Washington State Legislature online website as you're trying to figure out I'm going to stop share and reshare so that you can actually see what I'm looking at um that if if you haven't had a chance to navigate this yet a couple things I'm going to point you to to try to make it easier to for you to find what you're looking for the on this is the homepage of the Washington State Legislature online um it includes uh well a
006countdown so that's important but right below that the schedule for today so this is today January 16th it lists all the hearings that are going on the agendas which will also have Bill links which will also have a link for you to register to uh sign in for the record or testify if you're doing so on behalf of your district and then if you're not able to watch in person you can view the video it'll take you to the live tvw link so this will be updated a daily to reflect what's happening on today's schedule and if you are interested in actually learning about what might be happening ahead you'll need to go to the committee schedule agendas and documents page here and select the date range that you're looking for so if it's today
007through next Thursday you would indicate a such refresh the search button here and then um then you would scroll through the bottom paying attention to what the date says and it will list it in order of date and time so again I'm I'm I'm trying to work to empower you to find information that you need if um you need it at your fingertips but as you know I'm always available um if you have questions although my response time during the legislative session may be slower than you're used to because I'm in a hearing or talking with a legislator or another education partner um and may not get back to you as quickly as I like to uh and therefore if you're able to find the information on your own you may feel happier about that
008so this is one way to get information that you might be seeking most readily I'm going to go ahead and stop share go back to the agenda I'll be doing a little bit of this dance all day today so thanks for your patience uh another important resource that I included here as we kick off the 2025 legis lative session is the session cut off calendar I'm going to pull that up as a link um because I do think it's important for you to see it I'm G to stop share and reshare I got this down okay at least I think so you'll tell me if I don't um I'm going to increase the size because even with glasses my eyes are challenged this is the updated 2025 cut off calendar we call it so you
009will note that the date the month is listed here the date is listed here and it will increase as you progress down the page the day of the week and the day of the session so the reason why I think it's important for you to um be aware of this is that in my role and in the roles of my partners who are in a similar position uh we are watching this closely because most importantly coming up we know that the first policy committee cut off will be February 21st and what that means is that any house bill that has been referred to committee and heard in committee has to be passed out of that Committee in order for it to continue to progress through the legislative session so um I'm going to take uh
010we've got a handful of special education bills as an example I haven't I don't have the numbers committed to memory quite yet but I will soon in the meantime as we think about some of those bills we care most about like special education funding um there are several that are going to be he heard in Senate education next Wednesday actually that's great that means that they're being heard early in the committee that gives plenty of time over the next multiple weeks for it to be brought back for an executive session uh where they have the opportunity to vote it out of committee and onto the fiscal committee I'm not even going to go into detail about what that means it's important that it continues to progress I just wanted to remind you that the first
011round of bills that die will be identified on uh Friday February 21st because if they haven't made it out of their policy they haven't successfully passed out of their policy Committee of origin most for us that's going to mean they haven't passed out of one of the two education committees that means the bill most likely will not see the light of day for the rest of this session there are caveats to that but they're rare and I can dive into that later so import an important date for us to look ahead I will also tell you from a policy perspective that day is important because it allows us to narrow our focus on bills that actually will continue to progress through the session okay just giving you a little grounding in our advocacy tools here
012before we get started on some of the content another thing to note I'm not going to open this one up but I wanted you to know that it was a resource and should be a priority for you there are two great resources here um one is the legislative advocacy planning explainer and basically what that means is it's a it's a two-pager actually that gives some context for how you can be thinking about elevating legislative priorities specific to um funding um and increasing the allocations for special education transportation and um Material supplies and operating costs kind of explains a little bit about how you can be planning locally to continue to progress those priorities throughout the session and then there's actually a template that has been developed where you and your fellows including your superintendent and
013other staff can be identifying who among you is going to say what and when you're going to do it and the goal of this resource is to help you make a plan for how how you will be communicating regularly and consistently throughout the legislative session if you haven't already reached out to your legislators to say uh I hope you're having a a great start to the 2025 legislative session I see that in committee next week you're going to be hearing some of the uh priorities of our or organization I want to offer to be a resource to you in the meantime um thank you for your leadership in this space that's and and that would um still be relevant even if you've got legislators who aren't in the education committees they should know that these
014bills have uh already been identified for early action so that they are already paying ATT attention to it and they can vote favorably to those priorities in the future so a way for you to plan who's going to say what when so that you are always saying something as it relates to our legislative priorities and then um another really cool resource I just wanted to point you to if you weren't at legislative conference this past weekend uh we heard from a keynote speaker from the dignity index a tool that wasda staff has used pretty extensively especially in our Prof professional development last Regional meetings uh we provided some context for how the dignity index can be used in your own board work both in how you communicate with one another as well as how you
015communicate and respond to your public your community members this is a fun little I'd call it the Wordle of dignity as in you have the opportunity every day to go in and and sort of evaluate uh the civility or lack thereof of speech uh which is a great way for you to sort of teach yourself how to do the same so just a few sort of pieces of uh resource and materials that are helpful as we begin this work for a very long session and I'm going to go ahead and turn my screen off and make sure that Trisha our executive director oh she's there she's she's already on top of things I don't know if I've made you co-host yet are you do you have co-host capabilities already shisha I'm pretty sure I do
016but we'll find out in just a minute won't yeah as soon as I stop my share uh so I want to welcome in case you don't know Trisha lubok she is wasa's executive director um pleased to have her join us today I think she'll always be listening in the background at least but today she will be presenting um and I asked her to present for us today because wasda had the special opportunity to present to the members of the House Education committee chair Santos invited wda among several other organizations to present a little context about who we are and what we do and also what we don't do a little bit and Trisha did a beautiful job representing the organization you can watch the full recording from tvw but in case you don't do that
017uh We've have we've got her here right now and she's going to give a little bit of um uh it was only a f minute presentation so she's essentially going to do the same thing for you that she did for the members of our legislature because it's really great grounding in wasda as an organization and the work that we do so Trisha I'm going to turn it to you great thank you want to thank you all for being here today and just note that I'm going to try not to get distracted by the fact that Marissa mentioned in the same sentence a couple of my favorite things one is Wordle and one is the dignity index so really excited to jump into that and see how I can combine two of my early morning activities
018thank you for being here thank you for advocating um on behalf of your districts and um with wda I am going to um get started and share the slideshow that I shared with um the legislature and I think I'm going to have to uh have to forgive me as I'm getting myself organized here just a second want to be able to share oh um Marissa sharing is turned off for me that's the problem how mean of me let me correct it was it's very protective of you to make sure that I can't share things little little checks and balances on things I like that all right so okay let me see if I can be more successful in that this time here we go we'll share and PowerPoint and then I'm going to start that
019nothing like a stream of Consciousness everybody loves that so okay there we go I think we're are we in good shape here now Marissa looks great perfect thank you perfect okay great well as Marissa mentioned uh the um House Ed committee uh led by representative Santos um she runs a tight ship and so I knew that five minutes was it and then we would have a couple of minutes for questions so I will give a couple of extra minutes uh for some slides that I didn't expand upon with them but essentially uh I think that her whole concept in making sure that all of the education committee members and some of them are new have a full understanding of who the agencies are that support education and the education groups um in the state of
020Washington um what they do uh what the context is who they serve uh and also what's their grounding in terms of where they get their Authority um uh what rcws are connected with them and so I thought it was again a a thoughtful uh a thoughtful goal on her part and um there were a number of agencies including us who participated um quite happily so uh just an an overall view of the Statewide system obviously the education system in Washington state is large and complex and it involves um a number of different entities um you can see here obviously we have the 295 School Districts The Nine educational service districts that serve those um over 1.1 million students and a state budget of almost 12 billion um but the area where wasda swims is in
021supporting and providing resources to the 1,477 school directors that are in those 295 school districts so a little bit of background just in general um what uh what wda is um wasda is u a state agency that's authorized by the legislature to be self-governing and as you all know um every school board member in the state of Washington is a member of wda automatically a reminder for them that wasda has no regulatory Authority and also in almost all cases receives no funding from the legislature there are one or two small exceptions to that that are kind of Project based but um wasda is a a self supporting uh state agency and then wasda provides Statewide training and guidance um as well as legislative advocacy support policy and legal resources for boards so that's really our
022Lane there um they asked us to describe what the authority is for was dysfunctions and I uh mentioned to them that wasda celebrated it Centennial last year we are 101 years old um the association was created through statute by the legislature and um it's uh kind of a confusing description I think I would have rewarded it had they asked me uh it wasn't around when they uh created this RCW um but essentially it's really just to serve as uh as the ability for a state agency to be supporting the school directors who play a vital role in the state's nearly 300 school districts uh what is wasda uh essentially wasda people uh it it it includes all of you as members it includes the staff it includes all of the um other organization or all
023of the other committees and groups within was including the wasda board uh just a note to the legislature that wasda elects its own board of directors as well as members of the wasda standing committees and that the wasda members vote on their own advocacy platform um also just showed them the RCW that indicates that all school board members are automatically members of the State Association and again reminded them that really you know you can think of wasda as both a school director's professional association and also a state agency that's self-supporting and um I think that is one of the differences between us and uh most of the agencies that reported alongside us earlier this week so what's our purpose what are we here for we have our mission and vision here but essentially what it
024comes down to is that wasda exists in order to build leaders among Schoolboard members and we do that by empowering our members um and as many of you know you take advantage of the skills um and the tools and the knowledge that we share with each of you through um through training and professional development as well as through policy and legal resources and advocacy resources the goal is to support school board members in supporting the Excellence of Education within their own school districts so wasda serves uh serve Schoolboard members and Schoolboard members serve the families students and um and their own communities just a little bit of information here about uh Washington school board members uh it was a reminder to the legislature that they are the largest group of elected officials in the state
025of Washington almost all of them with the exception of I believe just two school districts are elected to fouryear terms and also being elected officials school board members can only be removed from office by either being voted out by their voting public in other words not being reelected um or through a recall process um again that is not any different from the legislators themselves uh because just like them school board members are elected officials I thought it was helpful to explain to especially this new committee new members of the committee that there are a couple things we can do and a couple of things that we don't do one of them as you all know is that wasda does not possess any legal author authority over school boards or over individual School directors again they
026are elected officials we don't exert Authority we do however have the ability to provide influence training um a wide variety of resources our model policies information advocacy and then just the ability for all of you to connect with each other um you can do that Statewide when we have our our events like ledge conference that we just had this weekend uh annual conference uh at general assembly and then regionally you can do that when we have um caucus meetings as well as our regional meetings that happen in the spring so sharing with them what are some of wasda functions those functions um really are focused around the support that wasda nonpartisan uh staff provides for school directors um these won't be a surprise to most of you they fall primarily into the areas of policy
027and legal supports strategic advocacy and leadership development services and within the uh training and the professional development that we provide the leadership development uh we really proot promote a common framework and that framework is found in essentially what we describe as the three functions of Schoolboard leadership and those apply both to your school board leadership as well as your individual ual leadership as a school board member and those are the Visionary leadership effective governance and strategic advocacy so all of our products and services um that we Pro all of you as members they're designed within these three function areas to um help you be the most effective uh board member that you can be we didn't share these three slides in detail with the committee again uh due to time constraints but I wanted them
028to be able to have the ability to come back and look if they uh wanted to dive into specifically what are the services in the in the three different branches so this is this describes some of the primary services within leadership development you're probably familiar with a lot of these um if you're not familiar with some of them dive into our leadership development services uh page on our website and you can find a lot of these a lot of information about all of these programs this is not all encompassing uh there are a lot of resources and services that we provide um in all three areas strategic advocacy Services again because you're with us today you might be particularly interested in in this area um you can see a number of the items that Marissa
029already mentioned like the bill tracker and the weekly legislative updates um of course you're participating in one of the services right now within session we're glad that you're here for that and then policy and legal resources are again a really V vital support for school board members um not only just the legal resources but also you all know that the model policy library is hugely important to all the work that you do within your districts ensuring that you have uh policies that are up toate complete and Le and ensure that you're legally compliant there are also a variety of other resources uh the the um team in policy and legal provides um some amazing uh work through the Publications uh the p&l uh policy and legal news publication is one that uh I certainly look
030forward to reading um each time it's issued again the uh chair Santos was interested in us sharing how our work is affected by state legislation and just one example that I was one that I was intimately involved in during my time in the leadership development Branch um this came out of um House Bill 504 four back in 2020 because we weren't busy with anything else in 2020 um but this RCW identified the requirement for um for Equity training for all school board members uh it was a uh a complex piece of legislation but it included both the requirement that school board members take this and they call it a governance training program but it was um really focused around uh cultural competency diversity equity and inclusion standards ards so those uh it required that wasda
031develop those standards and that we do so in collaboration with a number of groups including the uh pesb the professional educator Standards Board and then that we develop the curriculum that aligns with that and that we provide the training to Schoolboard members in a variety of ways and that Schoolboard members um take those within a certain time frame so that was a very big lift for wda again just a reminder that the uh legislature didn't fund any of that um and but we have successfully launched that and had a a really good response from members uh this is a just a list currently of some of the legislatively required training so under that educational Equity requirement that I just described um wasda has developed and delivered these five two and a half hour trainings you
032can see them listed here committing to educational Equity advancing inclusion through belonging we go into um just an explanation of the foundations of cultural proficiency identity discrimination is another one you may have taken one or more of these and then the discovering educational disparities is a brand new one that um that Heather curl who is now the director of leadership development is rolling out and then most of you are familiar with open government training wasda doesn't provide that per se um that's generally done through the Attorney General's office but we provide space for it at our annual conference and that's at no charge so that was just an example for the committee of what kind of trainings are legislatively required and then of course I closed and exactly the way Marissa always tells us to
033close which is thanking them for their time and their service to our state's um educa um education public education students and I bet I went over five minutes Marissa I didn't this time it's good it's good context um I I realize for many of you you came here probably for some Bill analysis but I I do think it's important for one for you to be aware that at least on the house education side of the legislative session they're really focused on doing work sessions this week and many next week too if you look at the calendar uh representative Santos was clear about this going into session that her aim um is not to pass a lot of policies this session but to ensure that the members of her committee whether they are new or returning
034are equipped with a very comprehensive view of the public education system so that as they're considering policies in this session and future sessions they have a good grounding in what is and what isn't and so we're honored that that included some education of who wasda is and what we do I also think it's important as you're thinking about what um legislators are saying but also what what they're asking some of the questions that they asked Trisha which she handled with Grace um included just to clarify those are the only legally required trainings to become a school director is that correct and so we we walked back through that so I think it's interesting that question was asked and then there was another question about um just uh does wasda have regulatory Authority or not that
035was pretty clear in the presentation but we just had to go back to it to reiterate that wasda has no regulatory Authority uh over school directors but School directors school boards have authority at the local level within their school district so that was clarified in a couple different questions anything you would add to that Trisha about that Q&A session well I think the the follow-up part of that question too was would you like regulatory Authority um which uh we perhaps danced around a bit and said well no we're not that's not what we're at we're not asking for that that's that's not our role and our role is really a support one for Schoolboard members yeah great thank you for being there this week Trisha and for your presentation to us I'm going to move
036us to the rest of the agenda so um with that I want to start digging in a little bit to uh wasda legislative advocacy sort of the program of advocacy that we work again because this is our first before we're really kicking off the session um I wanted to be sure everyone's grounded in understanding about how we Advocate um and I thought it would be important for the wasda board president to give a big picture view of that from the wasda board's perspective I share so thank you Derek for being here um I will pass the microphone to you so to speak thanks Marissa yeah and I see a lot of very experienced board members over there in the attendee list but also some some new ones from the last couple years and I would
037say that uh even if you went through the short session last year the long session hits different as the kids would say um it's exhausting it's long and stay hydrated because it's it's not going to end anytime soon so one of the things Marissa asked uh me to talk a little bit about is a conversation that we've been kicking around for a few years about just in general how wasda and its members approach legislators on um on these sorts of issues because a lot of things happen and once you get the scars of going through a few of these um you start to see some you start to see some commonalities and you start to have some ideas about how we might be more effective so you know the first first one I would I
038would bring up is um there will be many bills there will be many topics of conversation that come up and there will be a lot that dominate the things other people talk about in the world but we want to just make sure we're keeping our focus on the big three priorities and if you were at the legislative conference this week or you've read literally anything that wasda has put out in the past few months you know that those are special education funding mxs and transportation because along with everything else that's going on out there those are the three we want to always try to bring the conversation back to because that's what our students and our districts really really need right now um the second piece is is balancing how we talk about uh the
039need that we're seeing I know that there are a lot of districts that are in financial difficulty right now we saw some statistics on that this past weekend of just how many are in um one of a few different levels of of some some real Financial stress and I know as a School director that falls on you that is your respons responsibility to manage and that brings a lot of stress and so when you're feeling that it's it's hard not to lead with it but one of the things when we're talking about um these priorities we need to make sure that we're always framing it in terms of the investment that the legislature will be making and how that will help improve outcomes for kids this is not just about throwing money down a black
040hole which is one of the con complaints we sometimes kid so when we talk about special education we need to talk about how the additional funding that they're providing is going to help us better meet the needs of the needs of our students how it's always a struggle to fund the supports that that could help because we have such limited resources to to meet that need um and and then looking forward how with these sorts of Investments we're we know like a lot of districts um or all districts we're we're all improving how we deliver these Services whether that's reforming How We Do discipline whether that's inclusionary practices and those investments will help us do that job even better we want the legislature to feel like they're investing in in making things better and if
041we're talking about materials and supplies Marissa made this point this last weekend we know that that the exploding cost of insurance and utilities uh is killing our budgets I mean that is a huge problem across the entire state but we're going to pay those bills either way and so we need the legislature to understand we need you to fund that we need you to fund the cost increases that we've seen there because if you don't it's going to pull money away from the other seven categories in MSO things like curriculum technology Library materials all the stuff that our kids really need and that's why this is so important it's not just about a dollars and cense thing at the end of the day so that we can pay the life bill and the last suggestion
042that I'd make as we do this this advocacy is is our overall demeanor and posture um you ran for school board because you want to make things better legislator legislators are human and they run for the same reasons and they have a lot of ideas about things that they think would make education better or they've heard from their constituents about things that they think would make education better and in the past there have been times occasionally where every time someone had a good idea our posture especially when we get in the stressful mid part of the session is a little bit to throw up the hand and say unfunded mandate local control just this and and we we have to be careful about that we don't want them to tune us out we want them
043to see us as a partner who is willing to work with them to try to make things better for kids and and so it's hard because it often is an unfunded mandate it is an infringement on local control but it might also be a good idea and so how can we work together on making that good idea come come to fruition in a way that doesn't put undue burdens on school districts and allow us for when they have the really bad ideas to say ah this one is really bad we need to oppose this one completely so we just want to make sure that we're approaching that in the right way so just the last thing I just want to say to to all of you especially for those of you who are here today
044you know it this is a hugely important session for public education your engagement your Outreach all of the things that you're going to do to to provide supports and to provide context around the work that Marissa and her colleagues are doing uh in those Halls is just incredibly important for our kids and just and thank you for everything that you're committing to right now Marissa I think that ties me up thank you so much Derek I really appreciate you taking time to give some remarks and set the context um thank you for being here with us okay so let's get into the agenda forgot to mention at the very beginning that there is an opportunity as every week when we're doing this and we start getting into more of the policies in deeper detail uh
045some of some of my plan will be to bring content area experts and potentially legislators to these meetings so that they can um help us do a deeper dive on different policies and some of the questions or suggestions that you have along the way can help inform which policies we're going to do those deep Dives on obvious obvously we're going to focus consistently um on our uh legislative priorities uh but there will be other policy issues as Derek referenced that um that we will need to pay attention to and respond to in in some way shape or form so these sessions every week will'll do some deeper Dives on some of those as we go through so you can ask questions or make suggestions in the Q&A um and we will field those as we
046go uh whether they're relevant to today's conversation or I will make note of them if they're uh related to content that we might discuss in a future in session live so thanks for that gonna head back to the agenda um and then just remind you to continue the conversation about how wda weighs in on policies as a reminder uh we have uh a bill watch document I will um actually I'm just going to point you to where that is right now it is hyperlink here but it is on the wda website I'm going to click on it uh just to point you to where it goes on our website and we will be updating this at a minimum weekly uh there are new bills right now being introduced every single day and so we are
047um updating those uh the bill watch that we have every week to try to keep up with um the the volume of bills that are coming our way and what we try to do is look at it from a lens of it's not just in the education committee those will be on there but also are they in Workforce committee or health care but also impacting K12 when you look at uh the weekly schedule you will first see what's coming up in the week ahead this has been I just refresh this today so you'll be seeing upcoming events starting um just this afternoon what's happening this afternoon all the way through next week so that's the first part of this document so any bill that we are tracking if it has a hearing or executive dire
048uh executive action for next week it will be linked here in in the schedule then as you scroll to the bottom of the document you will see that there is a long comprehensive Bill list and we are working on sifting through those where it is um relevant or appropriate if wasda has a clear position we will name it here um and specify whether or not it is a wasda priority in the final column in the meantime just wanted to give you a list of all the Bills currently in play um many have been referred to a committee already um they may or may not get a hearing and so we're keeping an eye on all of these and you should as well and this is your resource to do so so when a Bill gets
049scheduled for a hearing um it gives us the opportunity then to prioritize its analysis and when we are looking at the analysis um just going to pop the schedule back up um when we are looking at a bill let's just take a specific Bill we are comparing member adopted positions to the content of that bill so uh many bills are complex uh and nuanced which means we are looking at at any bill from the perspective of supportive supportive positions as well as oppositional positions which often means as you have maybe experienced in the past that wasda is in a position to weigh in other on a lot of bills because of our very diverse perspective amongst 1,477 members so it's not just our membership that we know have a variety of perspectives on a given
050issue but our member adopted positions reflect that diversity and perspective so that puts wasda as a member-driven organization in the position to to need to um and morally and ethically have to represent the diverse perspectives of our membership which makes it often difficult to be totally in support or totally opposed to Bill proposals particularly when they walk the line of um I'll just use controversial or tense or Pol political or politicized issue so uh we're going to be talking about all those things throughout the session but I'm just giving you a heads up that that's often where wasda has to land in order to be uh effective as well as accurate and I say effective because I have heard from legislative staff that weighing in other from their perspective means that we are in a
051position to work with them to try to make the bill better if we're a clear con or clear Pro our position is clear which means that it's we're probably not going to move one way or the other because they're not going to totally flip the perspective of that bill but if we're other that means there's some information there that can help inform improvements to the bill very rarely is a bill introduced with the belief that it will pass as it is uh initially written there are often times amend Ms multiple amendments to any single bill before it actually uh gets um gets to a Governor's desk if it ever makes it that far which again is pretty rare in totality so as we review a bill compare it against member adopted positions uh I also
052bring uh Bill proposals to the uh legislative committee again that is your representative uh standing committee who I meet with weekly every Thursday at 5:30 and we sift through the next week's schedule I share with them my recommendations of how we will weigh in on bills that are scheduled for the next week uh after I've done an analysis of the position catalog and then I gather from them during those conversations perspectives on Bill proposals so what are the uh potential positive outcomes what are you doing already what might be the uh unintended consequences of implement implementing this bill where are there hidden or obvious costs uh where are there landmines that should be elevated to our legislators so that they are aware that this could cause some trouble at the local level those are conversations
053I have every week with your legislative committee again you elect your legislative committee representatives to per director area and so you will often hear from your legislative committee members during a session what do you think about this topic can you get me some data on this issue what is your current policy or practice around this uh particular in um Bill proposal so they're going to be reaching out to you with questions including what actual cost might be to inform fiscal notes and I would just beg of you to take each one of those very seriously we rely on you for Relevant And Timely information in order to inform legislators as well as wasda advocacy efforts representing you and your uh experiences boots on the ground so be on the lookout for those Communications but I
054also wanted you to uh know how we go about determining how wasda will weigh in on any given bill then i' would also remind you that your District your board has the opportunity to weigh in on any bill as well um you may have a local process for how you determine how you might weigh in on a bill who's responsible for leading that charge and does it require a board um decision or a vote again that would be a locally determined process but uh there are times and um that that are not um out of the ordinary where wasda might weigh in on a bill representing the full swath of swath of membership in one way but different uh school districts show up and have different perspectives on that bill and that is perfect fine
055acceptable and and we have come to expect that so uh don't feel like you cannot operate on your own in that regard just a little look back at this past week um it was a fairly light week for the first week of a legislative session we had a state of the state from an outgoing Governor we had a inaugural address from our incoming Governor last night was the Governor's Ball celebrating his inaugural day um so lots of grounding in new faces and new positions and we're still just figuring out where that lands Us in the chess game amongst these um ceremonies there have also been hearings where bills have been brought forward I wanted to call your attention to two actually uh from today one was about concerning School District elections It's always important to
056read what the bill actually says this bill was heard in Senate Ed today and I would call it a less super but not quite simple majority bill so simple majority is 50% plus one this would be a 55% Bill uh recognizing that it would help many districts but our member adopted position is very clear in its um advocacy for a simple majority and so Ronda lenberg from the e eaten BG School sorry Eatonville School District represented wasda today in um uh as of on this bill from the perspective that we are happy to see it moving in the right direction it will help school districts and for that we are grateful and we urge and beg of you to support a true simple majority on this very important proposal so that all districts can benefit
057from the same type of vote of as any other vote which is a 50% plus one vote um 5190 we signed in Pro on this one uh love the flexibility of it know that many of you are struggling to meet deadlines and cost requirements for the state energy performance standard deadlines and so this bill would essentially extend them out for 10 years so we signed in Pro just wanted to bring your attention to that uh this is one of those good little flexibility bills uh that I don't want to lose um sight of in the midst of all these other bills that are highly important or controversial because we want to see good little bills like this move forward because they they are responsive to some of the needs that all of you have Elevate
058elevated we need more time to do the work that you've asked us oh yeah and the resources too so now I want to turn to uh week two which is next starting next week the legislature meets on state holidays when state holidays fall during the legislative session so there will be hearings uh even starting on Monday uh several very critical bills next Wednesday and Senate Early Learning and K12 education this is a 1:30 hearing next Wednesday their plan is to hear all the bills on the Senate side that relate to the big three so there are two bills concerning special education funding one on Material supplies and operating costs and one on student transportation uh I want to thank Sarah bet Nell from the shoreline School District who put this nice side by side together
059on on the difference between the special education funding bills they have the same title but different content and I think it's important to pay attention to that and thank you Sarah for outlining what the key differences are as you'll see uh they really relate to um the percentiles for least restrictive environment or or LR um as well as the distribution for safety net and um not exactly sure which vehicle will move forward but it's good to see that this conversation is in play and so um uh I think there will be some negotiating as they hear more specifics about how this would impact your actual District so what I'm asking of all of you is to take these bills to your special education director and your school business officers and talk about how this would
060impact not just your funding because it moves the needle forward in all areas Rel ated to funding but also how it impacts implementation as well as Administration as well as student experience policy issues thinking about what it looks like in the classroom and potentially bringing those stories those real world stories to the legislature will be very helpful for them in determining which version of these bills are the ones that are best to move forward that really comes from all of you uh then there's also the Material supplies or MSO bill this is a senator Noble's bill it is a good bill it moves the needle forward in terms of our current allocation for MSO I will just let you know that it's not as good as we want it to be there is uh a
061house version that representative Berg has been working on extensively that is in the 400 $450 million range we recognize that that most likely will not be the final budget decision but we like to start with what we hope to receive um and this bill from uh Nobles on the Senate side is good and we want to be supportive of it but it's about a quarter of the total amount that the house version would be and so we will be supportive of moving the needle in this space but we will our preference for the house version and then last I wanted to uh share that the student transportation bill again doesn't go as far as we want it to in terms of overhauling the Stars formula to act to meet actual needs but it does move
062the needle for uh mckenny vento um students students experiencing homelessness so it's focus is on ensuring that students um mckenny vento students experiencing homelessness are getting the transportation that they need in order to get to and from school safely and uh predictably so again it's not everything that we want but it's a step in the right direction so in terms of strategy as we work closely with our other education Partners uh wasda will be supporting this as a a package with Wasa and PTA um and what we would hope is that you as a school district have the opportunity for one or more of those to bring forward what's the true implication to this policy implementation is it enough does doeses It Go Far Enough what can you do with it and what will still
063be left undone if it doesn't go all the way so your help is critical as it relates to those uh particular questions I also wanted to show you the comprehensive schedule for next week and we're getting close to the end of time um so we're not going to dig into the policy details but I wanted to alert you to some of the things coming up next week G to stop share again just in case that didn't quite go to where I wanted it I'm hoping this is showing the schedule um so if the 20th is Monday it's a fairly light start to the week but at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday in Senate learning and K12 education there are going to be four bills that your board um you as an individual Schoolboard member and your
064school board uh as a whole and your District as a whole are going to have probably some very strong opinions about they are all related to parent rights initiative student civil rights um and uh expanding definitions for anti-discrimination categories uh including changing language and statute to gender inclusive and gendere expansive schools to support a gender expansive students um and so I would would encourage you to take a look at all four of these bills to weigh in from your own District's perspective on one or be focusing our attention on 5179 with high level of concern uh I anticipate we will be opposing this bill it is very heavy-handed it uh adds compliance monitoring to the office of superintendent of Public Instruction for a complaints process to address non-compliance so essentially if it's interpreted from anyone
065within the school district or community that a Schoolboard member or superintendent is not following the law it enables them to First go through the complaints process at the local level but if they're unsuccessful um at that level they can take it to ospi for intervention and one of the intervention options would be for ospi to reduce the state funding alloc ation to the school district our obvious concern most obvious concern about that is that it's punishing students for an adult problem and so uh we are collecting our thoughts about all of these policy proposals we wait we may weigh in on some of the others but our attention will definitely be to 5179 because we have deep concern um about um how heavy-handed it is and that it creates liability for districts even when they
066are following the law so please pay attention to that and talk with your legal counsel about all of those um and that's on Tuesday and then on Senate Ed the very next day is the is the conversation around the big three so um it's a big week next week just for those two committees alone luckily house education is still doing a lot of work sessions they are going to hear some other bills I'll show you on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. they have Financial education instruction graduation requirement um conversation this is a a softer version of Representatives Roode representative rud's version from last year they've worked closely with State Board of Education to um soften it a bit but um we we will likely be weighing in on that um and then there are several others
067I will also tell you that 1296 is in many ways similar to um the heavy-handed bill that I just referenced 5179 it's not a companion bill but there are a lot of parallels so we'll be weighing in on both of those and would encourage you to take a look at them as well we're very close to time and I want to honor yours so I will just point to um the agenda again where there are many resources that I hope will be helpful to you [Music] um including like I said the legislative roster legislature online you can watch uh all of the hearings live from the Comforts of your home and you can testify from the Comforts of your home uh there's a way you can sign in and testify remotely if you need any
068help with that I'm happy to provide that support and several ways you can stay informed through wda through the re sources listed here I'm at time there's more for us to talk about but we will continue this conversation next week and in the uh in between time please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions or have any ideas or feedback stories or data to share uh that would inform how we show up next week on our Collective behalf appreciate all you do and for being here today thank you and we'll see you soon