What bills will we see in the 2024 Legislative Session…and how to get involved: Part 2–Representation and Funding

by the WAESN Legislative Committee

WAESN’s Bills to Track this Session

We’ve always said ethnic studies isn’t just a curriculum, it’s also a matter of pedagogy. In addition to how we teach our students, a full critical analysis of our education system must include a broader vision of justice along economic, racial, gender, sexuality, and class lines. Our interest in policy comes from an understanding that much of the injustices faced by our students are not a mistake but are by design. 

We have been fervently tracking bills this session to help highlight the efforts, and lack of effort, our state legislators are taking this session to address historical injustices perpetuated throughout our state policies. We’ve conveniently broken bills down into 4 different categories: representation, funding equity, increasing spending, and abolition. These categories are not a formal framework of analysis, but rather an incomplete list of intersecting policy issues. 

Representation

Representation is important, don’t get us wrong. But it is also vastly misunderstood, weaponized, tokenized, and used to placate structural changes. For example, in discussion with youth organizers, such as those from the Legislative Youth Advisory Council (LYAC), they report feeling tokenized, simply there to check the box of “youth voice.” Last year, legislators failed to pass the inclusion of “youth voice” in SB5462, which would have established a youth advisory committee to work in coordination with the curriculum committee of each school district. We worked with LYAC members as they wrote and revised this bill last session, and their frustration was palpable. We have been given reason to believe the bill would not see the light of day this session, as it has been deemed “long” by key legislators. In light of what we have heard from advocates, we suggested that LYAC focus on passing legislation to find funding to support their own efforts, providing curriculum, programming, and mentorship for these youth advocates. Our other suggestion was to cut the “long” bill to simply focus on its inclusion of LGBTQ people into our standards, which has yet to be incorporated explicitly in our cultural competency/DEI standards or the ethnic studies framework. It’s unclear if LYAC members will be heard this session. 

Last year’s session, we were strong supporters of SB5616, known as “Nothing about us without us,” a bill that would require that all “statutory entities,” like committees and task forces, that address issues of underrepresented communities, must include members who have lived experience of that community. SB5616 was carried over into this session, but has seen no movement, yet.

This session, there is one bill that will address “youth voice” specifically. This is SB5903, which would add a thirteenth member to the Professional Education Standards Board (PESB). This thirteenth member would serve two year terms instead of four and would be an undergraduate or graduate student appointed by the governor. Whether this role will be a symbolic appointment like many of the other youth appointments we will only know with time. We are in passive support of this bill, with an eye on not only who the governor appoints, but also how this role is incorporated into PESB’s decisions. 

Two bills this session we categorize as “representation” deal with removing exclusionary eligibility criteria that are all too common in our state policy. The first bill, one we support is HB1889, which would eliminate citizenship requirements for certain certifications. If we want a diverse teacher workforce, this is one important measure to ensure that we are not excluding eligible educators, regardless of immigration status. The second bill, HB1938, makes academic re-engagement opportunities accessible for students up to age 21, instead of students from ages 16-21. We only partly support this bill because we believe that “reengagement opportunities” should be extended to at least 24 years old. 

Increasing Spending

Despite higher spending, Washington State parents, students, educators, and administrators will tell you that many programs are still going underfunded. Many of our coalition members have been involved in increasing Special Education funding. Last year, we got some crumbs, increasing the SPED maximum spending to 15% per district, but many districts report having up to 25% SPED spending needs. HB1923 changes the funding formula, allotting more money per student who is enrolled in SPED 80% of the time or more. Advocates we know are in support of this bill, so we stand behind them in their long-term struggle for equitable funding. We are in support of HB1923 and will be testifying during public testimony (we will keep you posted on dates!). 

Legislators also have pre-filed HB1931 and HB2058, both important increases to spending on financial aid for incarcerated education and to expand the free lunch program in K-12 schools. While HB1931 does not go far enough to support incarcerated individuals access to education services, it is a positive reform that will bring more money to individuals with fewer hoops, criteria, and conditions. We have heard from organizations, such as Latino Development Organization (LDO), that bilingual education and literacy services are largely inaccessible by a growing illiterate, but bilingual prison population. HB2058 attempts to close the gap left by last year’s HB1238 in providing free lunches to public school students. Democrats failed to meet full funding for this program last year, so we hope this is the final push to ensure funding is provided for any student who requests free meals. Now, maybe we can think about quality… 

Finally, there is one more important bill to look at this session in regard to increasing funding for instructional assistants and school office support. HB1960 is important for two reasons, first, the obvious, it targets much needed educational support with increased funds and, two, it alters the prototypical funding ratio, enshrining increases over the coming years. The graphic below shows the increase in the minimum allocation of FT positions for the two positions in our prototypical model. 

Unfortunately this bill still leaves school counselors incredibly underfunded. A need that the Seattle Student Union saw and fought against in late 2023. 

Seattle Student Union organizers fought and won $20 million for mental health services through Seattle’s Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) this year. This money would come from an unprecedented increase in Sawant’s JumpStart tax on corporations in Seattle, a tax we must protect from the new City Council. Seattle Student Union organizers are expanding their work to the Washington Youth Alliance, where they will partner with other student organizing groups across the state. We look forward to partnering with them in the future to build a powerful statewide coalition of youth voices. 

Keep up to date on the progress of legislation this session with our bill tracker!

We expect, at the state level, for there to be a response to the dire need for mental health care in our schools. We see a dangerous trend of the misuse of SEL, which seems to run the risk of being used as a stop gap band-aid that will not hold back the floodgates of the mental health crisis this generation faces. HB2280 has been pre-filed and proposes creating a state-wide network of youth mental health care providers. This will make access to mental healthcare easier, but breathwork, alone, will not solve true mental healthcare needs. We support HB1960 and HB2280, and we hope to see legislation that will alter the current prototypical funding model.