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By Dr. Tracy Castro-Gill and Oliver Miska

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This post was originally published as part of a Back-to-School series in the South Seattle Emerald.

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Students have been fighting for ethnic studies since the 1960s. Yet it’s still only “encouraged” in Washington State, despite study after study showing its benefit for all students.

Black student unions and the Third World Liberation Front forged an intersectional solidarity movement in the 1960s at university campuses nationwide. Their multiracial, grassroots movement was institutionalized (read: colonized) into the ivory towers of higher education ethnic studies departments, such as African American studies, Asian American studies, Chicano studies, etc., but the fight for ethnic studies in K–12 is relatively new and is still being fought state by state.

In 2019 and 2020, the first legislation “encouraging” ethnic studies brought another institutionalized version of it into our K–12 schools. These bills triggered the creation of the Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee (ESAC) within the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), which would be tasked with developing an ethnic studies framework. The framework was published by OSPI in the fall of 2021. The mishandling of ESAC, which exploited Femmes of Color who wrote the framework, also soured relationships between ethnic studies experts and the state. OSPI needs to engage in reconciliation with these community organizations and ethnic studies experts.

Fortunately, we have a chance to combat neocolonialism and performative unfunded mandates, and Washington Ethnic Studies Now (WAESN) is convening a statewide coalition of educators, parents, youth, and community members advocating for a liberated, pan-ethnic model of ethnic studies rooted in intersectional solidarity.

WAESN is cited as one of the contributors to the 34-page framework, and WAESN’s former board president, Amanda Hubbard, was an official member of the ESAC. Since then, however, no movement has been made at the state level to support the implementation of ethnic studies in our state. In fact, OSPI decided to remove a list of professional development (PD) providers from the framework in a move that appeared to be retaliatory against WAESN for our political advocacy.

This is part of a series in the South Seattle Emerald called Back to School²: An Educational Series on Education highlighting advocacy efforts in education policy from the local School Board to the State Legislature.

What’s at Stake

According to a study recently conducted by WAESN, curriculum violence is an unaddressed epidemic that marginalized students face across the U.S. Dr. Stephanie Jones of Grinnell College has been documenting evidence of curriculum violence for a decade on her X account, “Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools” (@TraumaMapping). Jones defines curriculum violence as any curriculum that harms students intellectually or psychologically.

One of us, Dr. Tracy Castro-Gill, expanded on Jones’ definition of curriculum violence to include “learning materials, activities, assessments, educator values, practices, school and district policies, and disciplinary measures that are explicitly or implicitly biased and result in identity trauma for students and their families,” with identity trauma meaning “the traumatic experiences of … marginalized identities, such as gender, sexuality, ability, and economic status.”

In spite of Washington’s reputation as a “liberal bubble,” our state has had ample instances of curriculum violence.

In 2023, the WAESN Youth Advisory Board created an essay contest, awarding scholarships to four winners from different age ranges. The prompt was: “Tell us about a time you broke the rules and why.” Two of the four contest winners addressed curriculum violence perpetrated by educators in the Seattle school district. Anya Souza-Ponce wrote about her experience with an educator at Ballard High School who refused to say the non-English names of individuals correctly, specifically Kamala Harris. Max Ratza wrote about their experiences with transphobia at McClure Middle School during a school-sponsored theater production. Additionally, students of Castro-Gill’s American ethnic studies course at the University of Washington have been sharing their experiences with curriculum violence on WAESN’s blog. The most recent example comes from Lauryn Daniels, a Black femme student who shared the traumatic pressure to conform to white standards of existence during her K–12 experience. Stories have also emerged from the east side of the state.

Earlier this year, a Spokane educator came under fire for racist and classist content titled “Slaves and Hobos” he taught in an elementary classroom. These examples of curriculum violence are just scratching the surface when it comes to the violence, alienation, and exclusion students feel in our schools.

Curriculum violence is the direct result of teacher preparation programs that poorly prepare prospective educators to teach about race, racism, and other systems of oppression. It’s also indicative of the lack of legislation to protect marginalized students from psychological trauma in the classroom.

Examples of curriculum violence create an unavoidable argument for urgent change at the state level.

Here’s What Implementation Looks Like

Sustainable implementation of any initiative must start with building workforce capacity among state education agencies, university teacher preparation programs, schools, districts, and educators.

State Education Agencies

Currently, the State’s lead education agency, OSPI, lacks staff with expertise in ethnic studies. To fill this gap, implementation at the State level must include community-based organizations (CBOs) and individuals who have been doing the work outside of the system. Creating a position in OSPI for an ethnic studies program director will support efforts to bring CBOs, schools, districts, and State agencies together. Additionally, since ethnic studies is an interdisciplinary field of study, this new role will help facilitate the inclusion of its values and practices into every subject area.

WAESN met with Superintendent Chris Reykdal in August, and he voiced both his understanding of the importance of ethnic studies and his support for working on it at OSPI, to act as a statewide support for growing local programs.

University Teacher Preparation Programs

WAESN completed a study reporting on workforce capacity and teacher preparation for K–12 ethnic studies.

We found that teachers are unprepared to teach ethnic studies after graduating from their teacher preparation programs and need ongoing support.

Teacher education programs alone can’t fully train teachers to be culturally responsive or sustaining because of the deep-rooted White supremacy in education. —Dr. Cherry McDaniel

After years of advocacy, WAESN is working with Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (a Democrat who represents the 37th Legislative District) on action steps for this upcoming legislative session to invest in integrating ethnic studies for all teacher preparation programs and creating a certification process for teachers who want to teach ethnic studies courses. Improving teacher preparation is an important step in making systemic change to eliminate curriculum violence. 

We do not want to create more hurdles for educators, which is why we are demanding that Washington fund local districts to incentivize and invest in their educators’ professional development.

Schools and Districts

In addition to educator preparation and creating an ethnic studies program at OSPI, barriers need to be removed and protections need to be put in place.

Educators are currently afraid to teach about race and racism because of a political climate that villainizes critical race theory (CRT). Contrary to popular rhetoric claiming CRT is anti-white and divisive, CRT is a framework used to teach about systemic racial oppression that centers the agency of racially oppressed groups. We need to make policy changes that are proactive and not reactive to address this and protect educators from disciplinary actions for teaching about race and racism.

In Castro-Gill’s study on educators of color teaching ethnic studies, participants identified school administrators as their primary barrier to teaching the subject. They cited administrators’ emphasis on testing outcomes over student experiences as the main issue. This tendency among administrators derives from the fact that their job performance is measured, in part, by student test scores. WAESN proposes aligning administrator evaluations, instead, with the State Board of Education’s “Profile of a Graduate” and the Professional Educator Standards Board’s “Cultural Competence, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Standards.”

Lastly, we need to learn from the challenges and successes other states have faced.

California, for example, took the traditional ethnic studies approach and has faced backlash for “leaving out” various ethnic groups, most notably Jewish people, from the model curriculum. The California model also works as a standalone course, meaning it’s not integrated into existing coursework, like history, math, art, etc. This perpetuates a divide-and-conquer mentality instead of fostering open dialogue.

Oregon is using a model that integrates ethnic studies into social studies courses instead of a standalone model. It is transitioning from the institutionalized model to a more inclusive approach known as pan-ethnic studies. This model examines how systemic racism impacts all marginalized groups collectively, instead of focusing on the histories of individual groups separately, using an intersectional approach focused on the experiences of People of Color. WAESN has taken this approach and created ethnic studies curriculum frameworks for 14 different subjects.

We believe ethnic studies can and should be incorporated into every K–12 subject, and since 2020, we have been providing training to thousands of educators using this model.

How You Can Help

Ethnic studies legislation and policies have been facing ongoing attacks since they were introduced.

Special-interest groups, like Conservative Ladies of Washington, Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), and Stand With Us have notoriously sought to demonize and discredit WAESN’s work. Unfortunately, conservatives aren’t the only source of resistance. Sen. Lisa Wellman (a Democrat who represents the 41st District), who chairs the Senate Education Committee, has expressed resistance to ethnic studies, making uninformed statements about it not being inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community in the legislature’s Educational Opportunity Gaps Oversight and Accountability Committee (EOGOAC) meetings. We also expect pushback from some who will claim our legislative priorities place too much of a burden on educators. That’s why we are doubling down that any mandate must include clear funding and guidance for educators.

To demand systematic change, we are creating an intersectional coalition of community organizations, education leaders, and youth advocates statewide.

We don’t want a seat at the table. We want to create a new system designed by those who are currently left out.

Below are some ways you can help us win this fight.

• Send an email to your legislators telling them to support ethnic studies. It takes 30 seconds.
• Read over our legislative priorities and endorse our coalition. 
• Email us to learn how to endorse: LegislativeCommittee@WAEthnicStudies.com. 
• Donate to WAESN to support our advocacy (we don’t get paid for our advocacy work and rely solely on member donations).
• Keep an eye on WAESN’s Instagram account for important updates and action alerts, including upcoming webinars, workshops, and a WAESN lobby day in Olympia in February.

by Masha Campbell, AES 340 Student

American Ethnic Studies 340 has encouraged me to reflect on my experiences and positionality within the educational system. I identify as a white, queer, cisgender woman. In addition, my ethnic background consists of Russian-Karelian heritage. I am a second-generation immigrant. I am bilingual and multicultural. My identities have dictated my experiences throughout my life. However, I was not always aware of its impact.

I attended predominantly white schools in Northeast Seattle, a historically privileged district that was impacted by redlining. As a white person, I saw my racial identity consistently represented among my educators and school curricula. I never felt my race would be an obstacle to overcome. I also did not feel like certain academic or career goals would be unattainable due to a lack of racial representation in the world. However, when it came to my multilingualism, I did feel misrepresented.

As mentioned in my first reflection, my school was not culturally sustaining. None of my teachers were multilingual, and they expected me to conform to their monolinguistic practices. Even though I was fluent in English, I was enrolled in the English language learners program for six years. I began to internalize that my multilingualism hindered my intellectual development and academic performance.

Throughout my twelve years at Seattle Public Schools (SPS), I had less than five educators of color, none of whom were Black. Seattle Public Schools prides itself on, “centering diversity and social justice,” yet their demographics and curricula say otherwise. I recently learned through OSPI’s records that 89% of Roosevelt High School’s faculty and 63% of its student body identify as white. AES 340 brings context to these concerning statistics.

The UW Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, explains the legacy of redlining within current SPS demographics. In 1924, the neighborhood surrounding my high school (Roosevelt) announced that any person of the non-white race cannot be assigned or sold property within the neighborhood. These restrictions impacted the district’s racial population and access to generational wealth via real estate.

In addition, the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision greatly impacted the racial demographic of teachers. An Education Week article states that while the court ruling did integrate students of color, it failed to do the same with teachers of color. This was especially shocking for me to learn. I assumed the reason behind my school’s predominantly white faculty was the district. I was naive and unaware that this issue is widespread regardless of district.

My schools attempted to hire young educators of color. They were well-loved by students and very impactful. However, when budget cuts came around (which was often), they were the first to be let go due to seniority measures. This was heartbreaking for many, especially students of color who relied on these educators for emotional support.

Roosevelt High School bragged about offering courses about marginalized communities, such as American Ethnic Studies, Asian American Lit, Latin American Lit, African American Lit, and Native American Lit. However, there were many issues within these courses. All courses were offered as semester-long electives and as singletons, making them widely inaccessible. Due to their elective status, students felt the courses were not necessary. They opted for other courses deemed more desirable by colleges. Many students (including myself) took AP US History instead. The American History course was centered around the White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant narrative and offered the possibility of earning college credit. These factors prevented white students from learning different racial and cultural perspectives.

In addition, students of color felt like their identities were pushed aside and were expected to be grateful for the little representation they were given. Ethnic Studies courses weren’t viewed as an integral part of our education. My peers who attended the AES courses thought the content was impactful. However, the courses were structured toward white students and were intended to “illuminate them” rather than centering the students of color. It was frustrating to watch SPS hide behind a progressive mask while failing to follow through with their promises.

Listening to my peers of color talk about their experiences with predominantly white educators made me further understand the importance of representation in schools. Educators offer so much more than classroom instruction. They offer support and life perspectives. All students are entitled to feel that their identities are embraced.

Thanks to AES 340, I learned a lot about racial inequalities among educators/students and intend to continue. I want to become a public school speech therapist. I must educate myself on how to support my students properly. I will incorporate Critical Race Theory into my practice, continue to listen to my students, and practice self-reflection. I will not view my students based solely on their academic performance. Instead, I will embrace all their linguistic, cultural, familial, racial, and social wealth. Finally, I vow to make learning an additive rather than a subtractive experience for all my students.

by Dr. Tracy Castro-Gill

It’s late August, and, yes, elections are on everyone’s minds, but here, at WAESN, we’re laser focused on local and state politics, which is where decisions are made about public education and Ethnic Studies.

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As you may have heard by now, WAESN has a champion for our K–12 Ethnic Studies certification in Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos. WAESN has been hyper critical of Rep. Santos in the past, and we’re grateful she is willing to see that for what it was—accountability and a call to work more closely with K–12 Ethnic Studies experts and community-based organizations (CBOs). The new relationship we have with Rep. Santos is a perfect example of the fine line WAESN must walk as a political advocacy organization that wants to also remain rooted in community movements.

When WAESN incorporated in 2020, there was already progress being made at the state level on Ethnic Studies. At that point we knew the state was moving forward with or without us. We saw our role as an accountability mechanism to prevent the state from whitewashing and appropriating authentic, decolonial, and critical Ethnic Studies. Fortunately, we were able to intervene in the first process to implement Ethnic Studies: The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s (OSPI) Ethnic Studies Framework. Our intervention led to a problematic framework that WAESN can live with. This is the nature of working on the edges of a White supremacist system: cautious compromise.

There was a time in my life as an educator when I did not speak about politics and education. It was my most naive moment. . . For me, now I say that education is politics. Today, I say education has the quality of being politics, which shapes the learning process. Education is politics and politics has educability.

Paulo Freire—A Pedagogy for Liberation

WAESN caught a lot of shit for that intervention, however, and earned such titles as aggressive, political, confrontational, and some even suggested we were domestic terrorists. I mean, if that’s what it takes to make sure students and educators of color are centered in these decisions and processes, I’ll take it. I’m currently reading A Pedagogy for Liberation, and Paulo Freire is reminding me that there are no components of politics to education. Education is politics. If it weren’t, why would we need to lobby legislators and political entities such as OSPI and the State Board of Education (SBE)?

WAESN’s Grassroots Advocacy Shaped Ethnic Studies and Political Change in Washington

While we waited for folks to come around to the reality that they didn’t have all the answers, we continued our grassroots work, building relationships with educators, school districts, school board directors, student organizations, and education-focused CBOs. We trained thousands of educators on Ethnic Studies, which is important for teaching, but also important for advocacy. While our professional development doesn’t explicitly discuss organizing and advocacy, we know that when more people understand what Ethnic Studies actually is, the more people there will be to hold policy makers accountable to authentic and decolonial Ethnic Studies (hint: it’s not multiculturalism).

We conducted a pilot in 2021 on an Ethnic Studies endorsement funded by the Professional Educators Standards Board (PESB) and wrote a report about our findings. We also wrote a policy brief outlining the need and recommendations for a K–12 Ethnic Studies endorsement or certification pathway. We used the policy brief to shop around for a sponsor. That’s when we discovered that Rep. Santos and WAESN have one very important thing in common: we understand the importance of Ethnic Studies and the need to get it right the first time. Rep. Santos also understands that if teachers aren’t properly trained to teach Ethnic Studies, it will do more harm to students of color, the very students it purports to serve.

Oliver Miska joined the WAESN board in 2022, and together, we took a crash course in the political process of Washington State by literally going all in and learning by doing. Neither one of us had any training or experience with the process, but we were both willing to ask stupid questions, make mistakes, and fail. And the latter is exactly what we did the first year. That failure helped us become more determined in 2023, and we were prepared to address issues as they arose. 

By 2024, WAESN was everywhere in the news because of our involvement in advocating for the opportunity for genocide survivors to tell their own stories. This brought us together with a broader community of advocates, and Oliver was able to leverage that movement into tangible results. Because of WAESN’s newfound lobbying skills, we won a $180,000 budget proviso for anti-Islamophobia to be taught in schools that will be created by the Muslim community. This proviso was the first of its kind in Washington State, which had previously funded the Holocaust Center for Humanity, a Jewish-led organization, to create and teach lessons on anti-Islamophobia. WAESN became a player.

Playing the Political Game for Authentic Ethnic Studies in Washington Classrooms

In addition to working with Rep. Santos on a K–12 Ethnic Studies certification, we are also in talks with the SBE and OSPI on various ways they can support implementation of authentic Ethnic Studies. 

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We recently met with Superintendent Reykdal who, after listening to various WAESN members, asked why we would want to partner with OSPI if Ethnic Studies should be led by grassroots CBOs. Rep. Santos asked a similar question in our early talks with her about Ethnic Studies. This brings us back to that fine line we walk and the fact that Ethnic Studies in Washington State began in the legislature before WAESN existed. 

People want Ethnic Studies, and they want it to be systematized. How do you systematize a grassroots movement? Cautious compromise. But in order to achieve a compromise and not a total take over and appropriation, someone has to be at the table to fight for it. We know that district leaders do not give a single fuck about what WAESN says. They do, however, care about what the legislature, OSPI, PESB, and the SBE say. Someone has to be there to push these political bodies in the right direction. We may not get exactly what we want, but we can work to prevent as much harm as we can while continuing to push them closer and closer to our vision: Ethnic Studies in every classroom of WA State taught by anti-racist educators committed to centering the history and lived experiences of people of Color.

How You Can Help

WAESN has developed a one-, three-, and five-year plan for statewide implementation of K–12 Ethnic Studies. We are working with various political bodies, education associations, youth groups, and CBOs to help us achieve our goals. If you’d like to become part of our accountability mechanism you can:

• Join our Legislative Committee co-chaired by myself and Oliver Miska. 
• Join our Executive Board! We are especially in need of a treasurer. To start the application process, send a letter of interest and resume/CV to: director@waethnicstudies.com.
• Join our Youth Advisory Board if you are between the ages of 12 and 21.
• Become a WAESN sustaining member. Political advocacy costs a lot of money! While we are a 501(c)(4) organization and receive grant funding, we are prohibited from using most of that funding for political advocacy. We rely entirely on member donations to support this work.
• Subscribe to this blog and our newsletter for important updates and calls to action.
• Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for important updates and calls to action.
• Purchase our curriculum and swag!
• Tell people about WAESN! Simply sharing what you know about us and sharing our social media posts helps us build our collective!

By Lauryn Daniels, AES 340 student

Reflecting on hidden curriculum was very eye opening for me this week. As a child I remember being very aware of how people who looked like me were left out of our textbooks, except for when the unit on U.S. enslavement of African people and Civil Rights came around. When that time came, I always felt a sense of dread, and embarrassment almost. Kids would always end up laughing or making racist jokes about it at recess and such, which felt humiliating. As an adult, I can look back now and see how this reaction from my peers coupled with only seeing Black people come up in terms of enslavement made me feel inferior, especially in a predominantly white school.

As I continued to progress through school it made me angry at the way the education system was set up and at this idea of white people as a group of people who seemed inherently against me and my people. I think it’s interesting how, for me, from the perspective of a Black child, the curriculum quickly taught me the idea of a Black-white binary and began to heighten these feelings of intra-group loyalty for me that meant opposition to the proverbial white man. For other children of color who were not included whatsoever, they could not see how they fit into history at all, but for me it was a sense of hatred for the way I knew my ancestors were being disrespected but knowing there was so much more to my background.

Luckily, my grandma would teach me about Black history, so I knew this, but it wasn’t any less frustrating, and I still built up a fair share of internalized racism. I do not remember disliking white children, but adults I was wary of, and I especially hated the historical figures we learned about because, in my mind, I figured they were all racist and had probably done terrible things, so I didn’t see why they were being celebrated or focused on in class. Of course, I didn’t even “formally” learn anything about Chicano history until college, so that was just out of the picture in school entirely.

I remember in middle school this really solidified with the murder of Michael Brown. I was so shocked, horrified, and infuriated, and because the school system was already making me more aware of racism and oppression that Black people and other POC have had to endure throughout history year after year, this really highlighted to me how nothing had changed. I felt like no one cared, and it filled me with more hate towards my oppressors.

From then on, I became increasingly privy to the curriculum of control, and the more I learned, the more I realized the ulterior purposes that it was serving. My understanding of school then could not stay on the content but was constantly preoccupied with thoughts of how larger systems of oppression were always at play. I couldn’t even escape it at a place that was supposed to be for all children, supposed to be safe. Because of that, I felt disheartened and often expressed a disdain for our education system before I had the depth of understanding or experience that I do now. Growing up in an environment like that, where you hate your surroundings and your country and simultaneously feel hated by it, can make for a very sullen existence. That’s why I feel like sometimes, when I take classes like this, I am finally gaining the language to talk about things that I have been considering and experiencing for so long, which is empowering.

It comes as a great shock around the age of five, or six, or seven, to discover that the country to which you have pledged allegiance along with everyone else has not pledged allegiance to you.

—James Baldwin

This is also why I find it extremely ironic when opponents to CRT claim that this is a pedagogy intending to make white children feel guilt or self-hatred. How do they think the current education system makes every other child feel? Still, much like the students in the Robbins (2018) study, I continued to internalize messages of control that school taught me. For me, this not only manifested in feelings of inferiority, embarrassment, and hypervisibility/invisibility, but my self-esteem being extremely tied to my academic performance and rule following. I do always remember expressing a dislike for disciplinary systems, but I was never outright resistant to what a teacher told me to do. I did learn to work the system like the students in the study, participating in certain classes so that I could have certain privileges throughout the school building and such, or asking for a library pass so I could talk to my friends or go to Dutch Bros or something in high school. Still, I would cry if I scored below an A and took my grades extremely seriously, but this was not really because I wanted to learn any of the material at this point in my academic career. It was because I knew or felt this imminent sense that my future depended on excelling. I worked myself to stress and overwhelm trying to succeed in a system that I actually hated and did not feel cared for by except for the support I found in my teachers.

This calls to mind a quote from the Ladson-Billings piece (1998) where they cite Patricia Williams (1995), “‘One’s sense of empowerment defines one’s relation to law, in terms of trust-distrust, formality-informality, or rights-no rights (or ‘needs’)” (p. 16). For those whose status is protected by law, it is a more serious matter. They respect the law and feel that those who do not are morally wrong and deserve punishment. That’s what the school system teaches us too, evidenced in Robinson’s study. But, as a child of color when you realize that this system is against you, how can you be expected to respect it in a genuine or sincere way? That is why you get a sector of kids who blatantly disobey or are just simply behaving or learning in a way that is not considered acceptable or “standard,” or are just not the standard in and of themselves (not white, wealthy, hetero, cis males), and they get demonized, punished, and degraded. They learn to have even more scorn for education because of their experiences. They end up being just another who pretend to be rule followers and work 10 times harder just to gain an ounce of the same respect afforded to white students but inside despise the whole ordeal all the same.

Our school system conditions us to eventually go on to serve its racist, capitalist interests. It teaches us that if we don’t understand, we are the problem. It teaches us that if we are not included, we must not be important enough. It teaches us that there is only one way to be who we are based on monolithic stereotypes and even further that there is only one right way to learn, to look, to act, to be. It teaches us as children of color that though we may deserve respect just because we are human, we will not receive it without learning how to work the system at the expense of ourselves.

This experience of the education system is a huge part of what has inspired me to pursue Social Work and American Ethnic Studies, because like my ancestors, despite all of this, I still have a strong belief in the possibility of a better future for myself and those that come after me. I know that this starts with education, but not the kind that is standardized in the U.S.—with decolonial, anti-racist education, like the kind we learn about in this very class. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance when it comes to being in college at times, or even going to work inside systems that I want to dismantle, but I do believe that this is one of the best places I can be if I want to enact transformative justice, and that that doesn’t have to wait until I leave here. Or at least I hope so.

by Cecilia Meza, AES 340 student

One point that stuck with me during this week’s discussion was the curriculums within the various districts. It was Kirstens Robbins’ reading that really gave me a flashback to my own experiences in school. There’s the hidden curriculum of control of the students, and the way they view themselves.

I’ve discussed this story before in class, but to give another brief refresher, my racist library teacher made a racist comment about the Mexican students being bad kids while white kids were good kids. Not gonna lie, recounting that story is still a little triggering because that was during the 2016 election, and it seemed liked all of a sudden, I noticed everyone hating Mexicans because of the influence of a certain politician. This librarian teacher was just the first instance where I actually noticed and felt racism directed towards me and my people.

The participants saw themselves as unruly, dangerous, unmotivated, and in need of the school’s intervention, even as they expressed their resentment for it. The school’s curriculum of control changed the ways in which the students felt about themselves and each other. While they claimed to wish they did not have to follow so many rules, anytime I asked about what it would be like if the rules went away, the participants insisted that the student bodies were too unruly. They believed that student bodies were too dangerous to be allowed to remain undisciplined by the authority of the school. This is made more complex because it is not only the students in the building who come to believe these messages, but all of the adults as well. The messages subtly acted on everyone, even me.

Robbins, K. (2018). Resisting a curriculum of control. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 33(1), 59-69.  https://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/article/view/720/pdf

Anyways, when Robbins said that students begin to believe these narratives that they’re all inherently bad students if they were not being controlled, I thought about how when my librarian teacher made that racist comment, I, too, started to believe that Mexicans were bad kids. I desperately wanted to fit in and be considered a good kid, yet I was still punished more severely than my white classmates. And what’s worse was that I blamed myself. I kept thinking about what I could have done differently to gain my teachers’ favor. 

Another way I noticed the curriculum of control was when I was thinking back to my middle school days. The middle school in my hometown is the DEFINITION OF STRICT. Like, it’s ridiculous. Girls were not allowed to show shoulders, we were not allowed to have holes in our jeans. If we did, we were sent to the office, and they made us put sticky notes or duck tape over the holes in our jeans.

Yet the best part to my middle school’s controlling curriculum was lunch time. During lunch time, every grade level would be sent to lunch at different times, which was reasonable as it was a small gym. However, when we would find a spot to sit, we were told to stay in that spot for the rest of the lunch period. If you needed to go to the bathroom, you had to ask a para-pro. You were not even allowed to turn around in your seat during lunch. I remember one time I got yelled at by a para-pro to turn around and face forward in my seat. You weren’t allowed to talk to the kids behind you!

Thinking back to Robbins observations, schools convince children to believe that things would go haywire if they were allowed to move freely. Well, this next story I’m about to tell sorta contradicts the that. One time during lunch, I saw that the students down the table from me were sneakily tossing food in small amounts from their end of the gym to the other tables in front of them. Nothing much, just a carrot, or a grape. Children from the other tables noticed, because I saw food being tossed back to our end of the gym. Things escalated within seconds, and I saw applesauce cups being thrown, frozen fruit cups, and even a carton of chocolate milk was thrown high into the air. It landed on a girl wearing a white sweater. Once it was clear that there was a food fight in the gym, everyone immediately ran away from the tables, going to the sidelines of the gym, even the kids who initiated the food fight.

Anyways, back to my point . . . I feel like the more schools treat students as creatures that must be tamed and constantly disciplined, the more students will give them a reason to think that way; hence the infamous food fight in my middle school.

by Xitlaly Mendoza, AES 340 student

As a daughter of immigrant, agricultural-working parents, I was mostly raised in rural Eastern Washington where many of the topics I have learned in AES 340 are lessons my school district would never consider teaching. Many members of my community are conservative and do not value perspectives unaligned with theirs. Meanwhile, there are community and school leaders who choose to hide their racism behind “family values” and “traditional views.”

Although there is not an official hierarchy written down, the power White people hold in our community is seen and felt. Many of them are farmers and ranchers whose families have lived in the area for generations. Unless you share these characteristics, there is no future in these communities. Even though there is a heavily migrant-Latinx presence, many of our parents and even ourselves, end up working for our White friends’ parents. In the process, you are stuck with small-town social norms and ideologies unless you leave and search for others on your own. By attending the University of Washington, I recognized I would receive the opportunity to meet people of different backgrounds and learn about society as a whole. After learning about the origins of race and standardized testing through Critical Race Theory, I now recognize the difference in curricula in other schools in comparison to mine. Lastly, something that has not been specifically addressed in this course is how this lack of information on students gives them a personal and academic disadvantage.

Before attending college, I never knew what Critical Race Theory (CRT) was but recognized many in my community were against it. After reading Ladson-Billings’, Toward a Critical Theory of Education, I now understand that this is because it would call out their privilege in society and how much of its systems were only built for White people in the first place. I learned that CRT acknowledges our country’s history and issue of racism and how it is embedded in the bias of individuals and in structured social and legal systems as well. For example, in my high school, you will never learn how race was initially socially constructed by White men in order to place Europeans over Asians, Americans (Indigenous), and lastly, Africans. Growing up, society led me to believe that race was something normal and good. However, in the past, I struggled choosing my race because I never felt like any of the options represented me. For many students of color who do not learn this, they continue to feel out of place without a sense of belonging and feel quite alone. However, what they do not know is that this is exactly what it was meant for in the first place. Once they do, they begin to acknowledge their identity and contribute to representation.

In addition, CRT encourages critical thinking and analyzing the ideologies that are now considered social norms in culture and schools. From my academic experiences, critical thinking is not heavily emphasized as you are taught there is only one correct answer over a wrong one. Due to this and traditional curriculum, students do not learn the other side of history. An example of this is standardized testing, many of which I took growing up and believed “it would help me understand what I did not know.” These were the exact words my teacher said when I asked her why these tests were important. Since she was a teacher, I believed her, because she was an adult and held a higher position than I. However, my experiences in standardized testing were mostly the same: feeling nervous and overwhelmed while second guessing my intelligence. Meanwhile, I did not want to disappoint my mother and be placed in low math and science classes. After reading Au’s, Meritocracy 2.0, I learned that standardized tests were initially created to help White people seem smarter and better than any other race. I also learned how low test scores of students of color benefit school’s public funding. Sometimes, students of color will continue to face standardized testing even if  they do not need it anymore. As a result, many students miss out on class time and eventually fall behind. Meanwhile, while some students are able to overcome low-test scores, many students do not. Oftentimes, this can discourage students from being academically successful and choose not to pursue a higher education or other academic opportunities. Without knowing the original intentions of standardized tests, students believe they are not capable of being academically successful, preventing them from living their utmost potential.

Learning about the origins of race and standardized testing has allowed me to recognize why students of color often struggle to acknowledge their own identity academically and personally. For the most part, this is due to the fact that the academic system and any other system in place was never meant for people of color in the first place. Meanwhile, they are taught certain curricula due to social and political ideologies held by their community and school leaders. It isn’t until they attend higher institutions that they learn concepts such as CRT while others already know this concept. For me, this experience left me shocked and feeling disappointed realizing my school and the academic system had failed me big time – I was never the problem, they were. In some instances, students struggle to grasp a concept that is new to them but essentially are able to connect it with their personal experiences. As I continue to learn and unlearn about society, I recognize that sharing these concepts with my family and friends at home is vital in order to encourage them to do the same. Additionally, it is important for me to engage with organizations who contribute to marginalized communities and also contribute to the fight for equity in education. In the process, I also recognize that learning these concepts will allow them to better understand and acknowledge their own identity as students of color in a rural community. Lastly, gaining new knowledge outside of the classroom will allow them to overcome disadvantages and live up to their utmost potential while also breaking down barriers for other students of color.

by Dr. Tracy Castro-Gill, WAESN Executive Director

The 2024 legislative session saw a controversy that many people didn’t see coming. Senate Bill 5851 and House Bill 2037 sought to mandate, “Holocaust and other genocide education.” As the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization whose goal is to eradicate all forms of oppression, I support this mandate. I cannot, however, support the legislation that would have provided 100% of the funding to create and implement the curriculum on genocide to one organization, The Holocaust Center for Humanity (HCH). 

I testified against this bill, initially, because I subscribe to the ideal of, “Nothing about us without us.” Supposedly, our state Legislature agrees and passed HB1541 which requires all state task forces, work groups, and advisory committees to be comprised of persons whose identities will be impacted by decisions made by these groups. It’s odd, then, that Senator Wellman decided to kill the genocide legislation rather than allow survivors of genocide to own and tell our own stories. My organization, Washington Ethnic Studies Now (WAESN) was joined by survivors of genocide like the Rwandan Community Association of Washington and the Coalition of Immigrants, Refugees, and Communities of Color in demanding the right and the funding to tell our own stories through the lens of Ethnic Studies. The proposed legislation, however, would have provided the right to tell our stories to the HCH and only the HCH.

Our demands fell on hostile ears, because the HCH convinced some lawmakers that Ethnic Studies is not the appropriate vehicle to teach about genocide. Emily Alhadeff, owner of the blog, The Cholent, interviewed Dee Simon of the HCH. Emily quoted Simon as saying, “Without this bill, how are the other genocides going to get into the schools? Ethnic Studies has no expertise in the area.” This statement demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of what Ethnic Studies is.

The entire foundation of Ethnic Studies is exploring and dismantling settler colonialism and its effects on indigenous people globally. Settler colonialism cannot exist without genocide in its various forms. Yes, there are many ways to commit genocide. Genocide is not simply the destruction of peoples’ bodies. Settler colonialism results in land theft, physical genocide, cultural genocide, linguistic genocide, epistemicide (the destruction of funds of knowledge), land degradation, mass forced extinction of indigenous plants and animals, and so much more. Millions of indigenous people on the American continents continue to experience genocide on all of these levels, but these actions aren’t legally recognized as genocide. Ethnic Studies not only includes, “expertise in the area,” but goes deeper and covers more literal ground than Holocaust education and the legal definition of genocide. 

An argument was made during public testimony in the House Education Committee that the Holocaust should take center stage in genocide education because it’s the most well-documented genocide in history. The reality is this statement is close to the truth for several reasons:

• the legal definition of genocide is limited to the destruction of human bodies;
• more attention is given to crimes against humanity when the crimes are committed against white bodies;
• there is a historical lack of investment in the curation of materials about the histories of communities of color.

The coalition built by WAESN was asking the state to fix these issues, not to take anything away from survivors of the Holocaust. It was a “yes, and” demand. 

I believe that the HCH and other Jewish-led organizations should absolutely own and share their stories of oppression, resistance, and survival. I do not believe that Jewish-led organizations should have exclusive state-sanctioned and funded license to own and tell all stories of genocide, because they are not all equal. Our coalition continues to call on state lawmakers to follow their own advice and let nothing about us be without us.

by Anonymous AES 340 Student

This month’s post comes from a student of Dr. Castro-Gill’s American Ethnic Studies course at the University of Washington. It is written by a student who requested anonymity to protect them from hateful retaliation from white supremacists.

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The American Dream

In this class, some of the topics and takeaways we talked about were how racism is real and systemic, anti-Blackness is real and perpetuated by all non-Black people, people of the global majority can perpetuate Whiteness, the institution of education is a racist system, all education is political, cultural wealth and personal narratives are valuable data resources, misandry isn’t a thing, and white fragility is violence. We learned all of this through a critical race theory lens. 

Critical race theory aims to uncover and challenge the ways in which racism is entrenched in society, and to promote social justice and equality for all people, regardless of their race. Critical race theory challenges the idea that racism is an individual prejudice. It instead centers around how racism is embedded systemically into law, education, and the economy. In order to stop or reduce the perpetuation of Whiteness, racism, and white supremacy, we must first directly address the issues of racism.

As an adolescent growing up in America, I experienced many racial prejudices simply for the way I looked. One of the biggest issues that I’ve faced, yet am only now realizing is an issue, is hidden curriculum. While I was aware of the racial disparities in education, I never truly understood how deeply embedded it was into our society. In schools, they drill this ideology into our heads having us believe that this is the land of the free. The land where anyone can succeed as long as they work hard, where anyone can have their very own house on a hill with a picket white fence. And me being the naive fool that I am, as many other children also were, believed that my identity didn’t matter as long as I worked hard, got into a good college, graduated, and got a good job. Because of our young age, we were very impressionable, so I believed education would magically fix all the problems in my life without any consideration for why I had any issues in the first place. I always chalked it up to the fact that my parents and I were immigrants. I was oblivious to how they used education as a tool to “educate” us to believe we were free, all while shackling us with a system created for the oppression of people of color, those whom they deemed were less than themselves and didn’t fit their standards formed through social Darwinism. 

I was oblivious to how they used education as a tool to “educate” us to believe we were free, all while shackling us with a system created for the oppression of people of color . . .

Historically, pseudoscientific theories emerged categorizing humans based on inherent racial traits, and these theories claimed that white Europeans were biologically superior. And through colonialism, slavery, and the Jim Crow era racial segregation was enforced, and laws, discriminatory policies, and practices that advantaged whites were created to disadvantage people of color in education, housing, employment, and in the criminal justice system. I now understand that white supremacy was socially structured and perpetuated by historical and societal forces. I previously believed that it was more of an individual problem rather than a systemic one even though I knew that by definition racism meant, “a process by which system and policies, actions and attitudes create inequitable opportunities and outcomes for people based on race.” I never fully understood the “systemic” part of it. In the media and even in school it was always taught to me as an individualistic problem or story of the past. And now that I think about it, I wonder why I never questioned why racism still existed if the slave owners and white supremacists of the 1900s were the only reason racism existed.

Standardized Testing

Another topic we covered that has shaped my understanding of racism today is standardized testing. In class, we discussed how they reinforce existing racial inequalities. In education, they used standardized tests to measure intelligence and determine the amount of funding and resources a school received. And those schools with low scores would receive little to no funding and would sometimes even get shut down. These schools were typically majority people of color. So they are pushed out of schools and forced into the streets to fend for themselves. There is no such thing as equality here. The moment you came into this world you had an ascribed status that predetermined your fate. Born a person of color? Born a man or woman? Born into a rich, middle-class, or poor family? Any combination of these different identity groups is how they determine the limits of your life. Many folks are marginalized and oppressed into believing they aren’t good enough due to systemic oppression and discrimination based on intersectional identities. And standardized tests often cater to the experiences, knowledge, and values of students who come from more privileged backgrounds, typically whites. These exams are culturally biased and often disadvantage those of different cultural backgrounds who have limited experience due to their socioeconomic status. And the limitations of different socioeconomic factors are often reflected and amplified in these tests, as those students have fewer resources to support them in their preparation for their tests. 

An additional issue with standardized tests that we discussed was how education is narrowed in order to focus almost solely on the topics on the tests. So, students don’t have much opportunity to truly test their knowledge since the test focuses on specific topics and academic skills and the measurement of intelligence and abilities is limited to those topics. These tests don’t really reflect the student’s abilities as they cannot be limited to just a few topics. Intelligence comes in many forms and is often shaped by experiences and cultures which are different for everyone. And since standardized tests are often used in college applications and such, many students limit themselves in the range of knowledge they can obtain to meet these standards.

I know for myself this was a big deal and it definitely took a toll on my confidence, especially since at my school, the student’s ranks for these tests were displayed. It made me feel as though I wasn’t as good as everyone else without taking into consideration my own background and limitations. As a low-income, Black, African American Muslim woman, pursuing a career in the STEM field has been a great challenge for me. And for so long I believed I was simply incompetent and a fool for even believing I could become something great. When compared to my predominantly white peers, I was taught to believe I was unquestionably incapable of success. We were all learning together in the same classes and environment, or so I thought, yet I always felt like I was racing to catch up with them. At the time I did not understand why these other students performed better. Now I know it’s because they had resources outside of the classroom that I couldn’t afford or wasn’t even aware of. Living in a Eurocentric society being born white was the golden ticket to their lives. They didn’t have to struggle with racism which was embedded systemically into law, education, and the economy to benefit them, to give them all the opportunities to succeed and to give them a sense of superiority.

Representation

At the time I didn’t know how to identify these issues nor how to address them. I believed they were better than me not only because they were born into richer or wealthier white families giving them privileges and advantages in both education and the outside world, but also fact that I had little to no representation in my schools. In all my years of education, I had 2 black teachers, one in 8th grade and the other in my junior year of high school, one of which left our school halfway through the year (the high school one). At the time I didn’t realize the importance of having these role models in my life, but looking back now, after learning the importance of having them, I am eternally grateful for my 8th-grade teacher. She was the one teacher that always pushed me to do better, though at the time it only felt like she was giving me a hard time compared to my peers. She constantly reminded me that I needed to work harder and be more vocal, as I was an extremely shy and quiet kid back then. This class made me realize how important having someone like her in my life was. Someone who actually pushed me to do better. Someone who understood just how much more work I needed to put in compared to my peers who were already far ahead of me. 

STEM is a field made up of predominantly white males—the very group education is catered to and for. So, having to compete with them for opportunities and for recognition is hard, especially when you don’t know how to navigate through the system and have someone trustworthy you feel safe with and can rely on. This begs the question, “How do you win a fight you were set to lose, where every rule set and law made is disadvantageous to you, where you’re not even considered a competent person based on the color of your skin?”

As we saw in the film Agents of Change, action is required, and taking risks is inevitable. I’ve seen how the things that we may take for granted now were once something our predecessors had to fight for, and it’s just the bare minimum. We must continue to fight for our rights as humans and always look back and be grateful for the work our predecessors put in to get us everything we have now. And we must continue to do so if we are to be fully incorporated into society and have true equality, not just the sugar-coated lies we are told to make us amend our ways to follow their rules and ideals. While we may not feel significant or powerful enough to make a change we must stand up and be agents of our own change.

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References

Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons for the Economics of Education

The Effects of School Context, Structure, and Experiences on African American Males in Middle and High School

The Long-Lasting Effects of Schooling: Estimating the Effects of Science and Math

Identity in High School on College and Career Outcomes in STEM

Au, W. (2015). Meritocracy 2.0. Educational Policy. Meritocracy 2.0: High-Stakes Testing as a Racial Project of Neoliberal Multiculturalism

Lecture slide!

by the WAESN Legislative Committee

Equity Funding and School Construction

After the McCleary ruling of the Washington State Supreme Court of 2011, where the state was found guilty of not adequately funding education, there has been intense debate as to how to solve this problem. In 2018, only after state legislators made changes to our funding formulas, did the Supreme Court rule that we had met “adequate” funding according to the constitution. Many experts disagree with this assessment, including University of Washington professor David Knight, who was even published in the Seattle Times. 

This fall, the Court, which many were seeing as a reincarnation of McCleary, ruled against the Wakhaikum school district. According to the unanimous decision, “capital construction costs” must be shared between the state and local districts. This recent ruling puts the burden on local districts to fund what many would consider basic construction costs that come with maintaining our schools so they simply don’t become dilapidated and unable to provide a healthy and safe space for our young people to learn. In wake of the ruling, districts like Wakhaikum, who have failed to pass levies for school construction are still facing budget shortages and outdated buildings. 

Legislators have some awareness of this issue, having prefiled HB2017, SB5789, HB1044, and a joint resolution to amend the constitution, SJR8207. Each one of these bills attempts to address some of the challenges that are facing smaller and poorer districts, like Wakhaikum. We won’t go into a deep analysis of each of these bills here but expect more analysis and advocacy in the coming session. HB1044, which has a companion bill SB5126, will establish three years of “modernization” grants to go to small school districts. HB2017 and SJR8027 (which will go to a people’s vote in the next general election if passed) address changing the majority needed to pass levies on property taxes for school funding from 2/3rd majority to a simple majority. Finally, SB5789 will exempt districts from having to pay sales taxes for districts who receive funding from SCAP, or the School Construction Assistance Program. This change, sponsored by Mark Mullet, would be a small band aid for the program that doesn’t address its structural inequities. SCAP will continue to fund wealthier districts under these changes, contributing to the inequity of our already disproportionately funded districts. We have two funding mechanisms that progressively distribute education funds, but both of these programs remain underfunded given our legislators’ current priorities this session. We, at WAESN, remain disappointed with the reforms we are seeing this year in the state legislature. Legislators seem aware of the issues facing our schools and community, but their approaches to solving these issues beat around the bush. 

Abolition

Finally, a key pillar to ethnic studies is abolition. We must find ways to break down the school to prison pipeline and we are thankful to be in partnership organizations doing this important work. We are tracking two bills we loosely call abolitionist, the first, HB1513, invests in finding non-punitive alternatives for non-moving vehicle violations. The bill leaves much to be desired but does incentivize the creation of voucher programs and “fix it tickets,” among other non-punitive alternatives. For example, this would provide low-income drivers with vouchers to fix broken lights, rather than fee-based tickets; one small step in the process of rethinking using punishment such as financial burden for low level infractions. While right-wingers decry that Washington is the “wild west” in our decriminalization of drugs and our defunding of the police (both not true), we are actually barely making headway to pass research-backed criminal reform like HB1513 or an income-based fee scale. 

The final bill we will highlight is HB 1479, which is a carryover from last session, that deals with controversial isolation and restraint practices in our schools. We are in strong support of this reform bill, as many of our partners have been fighting for these important policy changes. ACLU of Washington goes more into depth on this policy, its implications, and the need for changes. 

NEXT STEPS, ACTIONS ITEMS, and EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS!

That was a lot! Thank you for reading this far. We know this was only a partial overview of what will be a busy short session, so keep a close look at our Instagram for updates, or sign up here for updates. As always, if you are looking to get started and feeling intimidated, check out our landing page for those who are policy-curious!  We love working with educators, so please be in touch if you have questions on how to use our resources in your classroom!

Join us March 2nd 11:00am—3:00pm for our spring In Lak’Ech organizing meeting where we’ll recap the legislative session and plan for 2025! This is a free event open to anyone who’s down to be part of a growing coalition and can make a mean charcuterie board!

The legislative committee has two more important announcements! This fall and winter we have accepted our two first interns, both undergraduate students interested in law and Ethnic Studies. We are lucky to have Elizabeth Rojas, a senior at University of Washington majoring in Education, Communities, and Organizations. We are excited about a continued partnership with the University of Washington, working with their students and teacher candidates. We are also graced, once again, by Priyanka Mukhara, a sophomore at Harvard University, and previously a WAESN Youth Advisory Board member. We have all grown since Priyanka’s previous tenure with us, so her return is a refreshing reminder of how much we have done, how much we can change, and how much we have learned in the past few years.

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.