This week is the real start of the new year. Parents take their five-year-olds to their first day of kindergarten, kids return to new grades and new expectations, high schools gear up for football and cross country and soccer, the…
This week is the real start of the new year. Parents take their five-year-olds to their first day of kindergarten, kids return to new grades and new expectations, high schools gear up for football and cross country and soccer, the…
Last November, Washington voters passed Initiative 1351. I-1351 directed the Legislature to allocate funding for smaller K-12 class sizes, with extra class-size reductions in high-poverty schools. Increased funding for these changes was to have been phased in over four years.…
Last week, Washington legislators and the Governor managed to pass a state budget and avert a government shutdown. The new budget boosts K-12 funding just enough to maybe hit this year’s target set by the state Supreme Court in the…
The Legislature is at loggerheads, with the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate far apart in their proposed budgets. Neither party has a long-term plan for fully funding K-12 education, higher education, mental health, public employee contracts and teacher cost-of-living…
Now that the Legislature is back at work, they have to find the revenues for K-12 education, for higher education, for foster kids, for the mentally ill, for the state patrol, for home care workers and early childhood teachers and…
Last week, while most of us were madly preparing for the holidays, Governor Inslee proposed a Washington state budget for the next two years. Adopting a budget will be the main task of our legislature when it convenes the second…
When is a law not a law? That seems to be the question taken up by The Herald’s editorial board, education “reform” groups like Stand for Children, the Seattle Times, state legislators and now the governor. It is an odd…
It’s election time and we all have received our ballots. Now we get to ponder our choices, look over the voter’s pamphlet, read or just recycle the literature/propaganda/ disinformation that comes in the mail, and fill in the ovals for…
I always think of September as the actual beginning of the year. School starts, summer vacation is over, and we are all back to work. As I help out with coaching duties for cross country at Ballard High School, I…
