Last night the Senate took amendments on their budget proposal and passed it out of committee. The Ways and Means Committee adopted a whole passel of amendments including some dealing with the issues we expressed concern over in our summary and testimony earlier this week, specifically changes to ECEAP and the usage of Average Daily [...]
A deeper dive on Senate ECEAP proposal
April 15, 2011 By
After we posted our first look at the Senate budget proposal, I got a bunch of questions regarding why we had concerns over the Senate’s proposal to shuffle ECEAP funding around to enroll more children. For those of you who hate acronyms, ECEAP stands for the Early Childhood Education and Assistance program – our state’s [...]
LEV testifies on Senate budget
April 14, 2011 By
Yesterday, LEV’s legislative director, George Scarola, testified on the Senate’s proposed education budget. Below is his entire testimony via TVW. Also, after George’s testimony, you can forward to the 2:18:25 mark to hear Superintendent Randy Dorn’s testimony. Below is a copy of George’s prepared remarks (not a verbatim transcript of his testimony). First, a sincere [...]
Teacher evaluations: A teacher’s perspective
April 13, 2011 By
This post was written by Kristin Bailey-Fogarty, a teacher in Seattle. One of the biggest reasons teachers resist replacing seniority-based reductions in force with an evaluation-based system is that they’re afraid of having their effectiveness measured with test scores and evaluations. Fear is not a good reason to maintain our current system, where–during reductions in [...]
Teacher evaluations: A parent’s perspective
April 13, 2011 By
This blog post was written by DeeDee Loberg, a parent and community organizer who lives in the city of Spokane Valley. She is a parent representative on a committee for the Central Valley District Principal/Teacher Evaluations Pilot Project. When I first became involved with this committee, it was more to understand all the requirements for [...]
Why an effective teacher evaluation system matters
April 13, 2011 By
During the last session, the Legislature created a four-tier teacher evaluation system to make sure that school districts have a meaningful process for all teachers to improve – and to ensure that we have the most effective people teaching our kids. As part of the transition from our current system (most districts have a two-tier [...]
First look: Senate and House budget comparisons
April 13, 2011 By
Senior Policy and Political Strategist Hannah Lidman and Senior Policy Analyst Heather Cope both contributed to this report. View our side-by-side comparison of the Senate and House budget proposals. Late last night, the Senate released its formal budget proposal. On Saturday, the House passed its budget proposal which we detailed as compared to the House [...]
Senate votes to end “last in, first out” policies for teachers
April 12, 2011 By
Big news out of Olympia tonight. This evening the Senate passed HB 1443, a bill including the recommendations of the Quality Education Council and continuing education reforms, by a vote of 30-17. Changes made through something called a striking amendment by Sen. Tom was adopted that added the following language: Reductions in Force: Requires districts [...]
Beating the Budget Crunch: A parent’s view on ECEAP
April 12, 2011 By
This is part of a series of blog posts about important programs that are at risk of being cut or reduced in the state budget. This post is written by Surina Warren-Nash, a mother of two who lives in Ridgefield. The Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) is the Washington State version of the [...]
WAKids passes House
April 12, 2011 By
Yesterday, the WAKids legislation moved one step closer to reality. The House voted 57-39, mostly along party lines, in support of a kindergarten transition process being piloted this school year. The program is designed to identify the skills, knowledge, and characteristics of kindergarten students at the beginning of the school year to help determine their [...]
