Fully Funding Basic Education
Our state constitution makes it abundantly clear that the paramount duty of the State of Washington is fully funding our public schools. This obligation has grown more serious as the global economy has compelled us to reach higher. An 8th grade education was the standard 100 years ago (my parents only completed education through the eighth grade). Even a few decades ago you could find solid work in manufacturing, agriculture, and a host of other career fields with a high school diploma and no additional formal training. The data is clear that our students need to be prepared for education beyond high school. We have already added $5 billion per year to our schools to shore up our current education model. Sadly, this model was created decades ago and it fails to meet today’s obligation for more student supports such as career guidance, mental health, school safety, and other emerging issues in the American experience. In fact, just four years ago, our K-12 system was 51% of our state budget, but has once again fallen to less than 44%. I am prepared to work as hard as it takes to ensure all of our kids have affordable access to community colleges, universities, technical colleges, apprenticeships, military service, or a host of on-the-job training opportunities. We don’t need every student in a one size fits all pathway, but we do need every student to get the support they need to explore their passion and to be prepared to pursue education and training beyond high school.
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Mental Health Supports
Talking about mental health is HARD, especially when you're a young student who may be experiencing these types of struggles for the first time. Students across the nation are experiencing this firsthand, and we must act! Having support at school, where our kids spend most of their weekdays, is so important to their health, wellbeing, and learning.
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Under my leadership as Superintendent, the state legislature funded physical, social, and emotional support staff. Those staff include counselors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, family engagement coordinators, etc. With these funds, the legislature has funded over 600 physical, social, and emotional support staff. I also advocated for, and the legislature funded, regional school safety centers in each of the nine educational service districts. Part of their work, through the Behavioral Health System Navigators, is to coordinate behavioral health system, delivery, and suicide prevention training and awareness for school staff. Federally, OSPI was awarded a grant, Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness & Resiliency in Education), that creates the pathways for collaboration between schools, tribes, community partners, educational service districts, and mental & behavioral health providers — with the goal being to increase access to mental and behavioral health services and reduce barriers to those services. Using federal emergency relief funds, we invested in partnerships in multiple communities to teach Hope Education, an evidence-based model to teach students how to retain and build hope and confidence in themselves, which teaches them the skills to push past barriers and overcome adversity.
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This is not an all-encompassing list of what we have done to support Washington students’ mental health and wellbeing, and the work is surely not done! As students work to navigate life and school the best they can, they need and deserve a strong advocate.
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Keeping our Public Schools Public
Our democratic republic is genuinely at risk, and I think public education is part of the solution! It’s a battle of values between strengthening public schools (the common good) versus privatizing our constitutional duty. Children are harmed when we segregate our schools based on income, race, disability, and religion, but that is exactly what’s happening all over the country – I won’t let it happen here! My leadership has focused on resilient local public schools, equity-based decision making, respecting educators, and constant innovation. When it comes to policy and governance questions regarding our public schools remaining truly public, we should use three filters: 1) Is it publicly funded? 2) Will the accountability be entrusted to publicly elected officials or appointed officers of publicly elected officials; and 3) Is the performance accountability with the voters by way of elections, public records, and genuine access to decision makers and official decision making? Using these filters ensures we are supporting ALL children in EVERY community. Public education changed my life, and I want every child in Washington to have that same opportunity.
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High School Completion
We cannot achieve our highest ideals as a state until we make a commitment to get 100% of our students graduated from high school with a high-quality diploma. I am proud that we have achieved a record high graduation rate for our state, even as our students have taken more rigorous coursework. Unfortunately, 15% of our students still do not earn their high school diploma. My single biggest priority as your Superintendent will be improving our graduation rate even further. Every student that drops out or is pushed out of our schools loses an average of $400,000 in lifetime earnings compared to a high school completer. Without a high school diploma, not only do these students face more challenges in life than their peers, they are much more likely to depend on taxpayer services in the form of food assistance, emergency medical support, criminal justice resources, and sadly a much higher incarceration rate. I am a strong believer in high expectations of each of our students, and they deserve multiple ways to demonstrate their proficiency, their ability, and their passion. Our economy needs all kinds of talent, and our students deserve multiple pathways to success. I led the charge in delinking high-stakes tests from graduation, and we replaced them with more appropriate graduation pathways. We honor career and technical education equally with more “traditional” academic learning. Over the next four years, we will fully build out our graduation pathways and give all students a jump start on careers, training, and college while they are in high school with ZERO out-of-pocket costs.
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Opportunity Gaps
For too long, we used the phrase “achievement gap” to describe persistent differences in academic achievement across student groups. While we are closing graduation gaps faster than any time in our history, we still have opportunity gaps that result in achievement gaps – not every student is resourced equitably or supported equally. We can achieve a 100% graduation rate if we take a more sincere, more persistent, and more honest approach to how we fund our schools and support our students. All students and communities deserve a fully funded education system that recognizes that not all communities are the same. Our students deserve to experience teachers, administrators, and school boards that are as diverse as they are. We have made substantial progress on increasing the racial diversity of our educators over the last six years, particularly among our beginning teachers, but we have much more work to do before our educators will truly be reflective of the students they serve. In addition, for too long, our state has underinvested in services for our students with disabilities, and we have done all students a disservice by supporting the learning of our students with disabilities in environments separate from their peers. We are changing this! We are rapidly moving toward full funding of services for our students, and our work around inclusionary practices has gained national attention. Our state resources must be targeted beyond formula funds to schools and students that would benefit from additional support. Our data systems are now drilling down to expose the disproportionate impacts of our education funding policies, and we are making changes to the way we resource our schools.
As your State Superintendent, I have diversified the OSPI staff and we have created a policy framework that embeds solutions to the opportunity gap in everything we do! Not a single policy is promoted from my office that does not fully examine the impact on our diverse communities. From policy development, to grant funds, to professional development for our school districts and regional educational service districts; everything OSPI does to approach 100% graduation rates has an acute eye to the populations that have been systemically denied opportunity in our past and still today. And we have improved graduation rates faster for these targeted student groups, but there is more to be done! Embracing diversity is not an exercise in being color blind. Quite the opposite; it is absolutely about seeing race, seeing diversity, having crucial conversations, and strategically investing in our communities to cultivate a greater passion about our public schools and to set high expectations for all students.
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Protecting LGBTQ+ Students
I am absolutely committed to ensuring that all learners have access to a quality education in a safe and caring environment. This work is not done until EVERY student feels that they belong and are valued in their learning environment. I will continue to support access to lifesaving gender-affirming care—this includes honoring a student’s chosen name and pronouns in the classroom. Additionally, we must continue to teach our students the importance of gender diversity, whether it be through direct lesson plans or by lifting up classroom materials and books that feature LGBTQ+ characters. We must also ensure Title IX laws are being protected with gender-inclusive bathroom access and inclusion in sports and other activities. I will never stop fighting for justice for all of our learners!
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Keeping our Students Safe from Gun Violence
Gun violence is harming and killing Washingtonians, and our kids in school are no exception to this truth. We can’t bring back the victims we’ve lost to this epidemic, but we can change the course of our future — gun violence is preventable, and we need strong gun safety advocates in leadership positions! Our team is the first OSPI team to explicitly call out gun violence as a public health risk and crisis, and we have provided direct guidance to families on safe storage. We did this in partnership with the Department of Health, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, and other ally groups. Through the Healthy Youth Survey, we know that very few students bring weapons to school, but too many of them do report relatively easy access to guns in the home. Public education has a responsibility to teach young people about the risks of firearms from accidents, suicides, and homicides. The only progress this country has ever made on any crisis, has come when education complemented legal changes. We need to keep moving the age of gun ownership up until it aligns with the science of fully formed brains and decision making, and we need to make more adults responsible when minors access a gun in the home that results in accidental deaths or crimes. As Superintendent (as well as during my time in the Washington State Legislature), I have supported and will ALWAYS support policies to reduce gun violence and advocate for the safety of our children. I will continue to stand up to the gun lobby and fight to keep guns out of our schools and out of the hands of our children.
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Teacher Excellence
We cannot have excellent schools without excellent educators. I was the benefactor of outstanding teachers growing up. Our educators have only gotten better! They are more data driven, more student focused, and our teacher preparation programs have expanded to more equitable pipelines, even as those programs have focused on research-based teaching, learning, and assessment techniques. Sadly, our educator pay, relative to the growth in pay for similarly educated professionals in our society, was falling desperately behind. We changed that! Average teacher pay has increased by 42% since I became superintendent, and we aren’t done yet! Equitable pay not only encourages young people to become teachers, but it honors our current professionals, and ultimately results in a dignified retirement after a career of supporting students and families.
Our best and brightest need to see teaching as a career of first choice even as they are being courted by some of the highest paid industries in the United States. This means identifying talent, recruiting that talent, challenging them with robust prep programs, market-rate compensation, and persistent high-quality job-embedded professional development. Yes, teachers love their students and they hold sacred their public service, but compensation, respect, and professional support MUST complement their passion for the teaching and learning process.
I will continue to partner with the Legislature to ensure that fully funding our schools also means fully compensating all of our public educators, and I define that broadly – teachers, para-educators, bus drivers, food service workers, principals, professional support staff, and every single job in our public schools.
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Expanding Dual Credit Options
In our state, we are a national leader in offering college credit to students while they are in high school. Running Start, College in the High School, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and a host of other programs empower students to use their precious time to achieve college credit while also earning high school credit. These dual credit programs save families and taxpayers a substantial amount of money every year – Running Start alone saves families in our state over $100 million per year. With these programs, students complete their college degrees sooner and pay less tuition once they attend a college or university.
As Superintendent, I have been leading the charge to eliminate ALL out-of-pocket fees for students taking college credit while in high school. Just this last year, we eliminated all fees associated with College in the High School – up next, zero fees for Running Start!
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Expanding Career and Technical Education (CTE)
Our world is becoming more complex, more technical, and more specialized. Yet, over the last twenty years, we have seen a steady deterioration of technical education programs in our schools. You and I had the benefit of wood shops, metal shops, and a host of other technical options. Sadly, we made a mistake as a nation believing that these were no longer necessary. This has narrowed the offerings of our high schools. It has forced too many kids into traditional lecture and listen courses when their learning preference is often more hands-on. This has taken a toll, especially among our young men who drop out at substantially higher rates. We must keep building 21st century career and technical education programs for our students as a powerful pathway to the workforce. Even our students are telling us this – two-thirds of high school students surveyed questioned how relevant their classwork is to their long-term interests. One-size fits all hasn’t worked for twenty years, and we need to return more course taking decisions to students and their families – more credit flexibility while in high school, more CTE course options, and more industry credentials earned in high school.
As Superintendent, I have helped our state turn the corner on this. CTE programs are on the rise, as early as middle school, and we now honor graduation pathways through technical fields. We are not done! I will work tirelessly to ensure that every student has a pathway to graduation. This does not mean lower standards – the carpenter needs geometry, the welder needs chemistry, the computer scientist needs algebra, and the nursing assistant needs anatomy. We know how to embed critical thinking and core subjects into industry pathways, we need policymakers to embrace the high school credit flexibility students need to succeed.
Expanding CTE also means having the right capital facilities. We have worked hard to restore capital budget funds to ensure our schools and skills centers have the highest quality programs and equipment to meet the needs of tomorrow’s workforce. Over the next four years it will be critical that every district has the resources they need to build, renovate, and maintain the physical spaces they need locally, or regionally, to expand their CTE programs.
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High Standards with Local Control
The greatest failure of the federal government over the last 40 years has been an inappropriate attempt to control local schools from Washington, D.C. while simultaneously shrinking the federal investment in public education. D.C. wants more control with less dollars – NO! I have been an outspoken voice to ensure that Washington State’s taxpayers are in control of Washington State’s education system; it’s state constitutions across the nation that describe each state’s approach to education. In our state, public education is the highest, most important function of state government. We carry out our state system of funding and policy by empowering locally elected school boards and local communities to determine the details of our paramount duty, one community at a time. Congress has every right to demand high standards across the states, but to remain constitutionally sound and to further innovate public education, states need to control the policies by which student achievement occurs, and local school boards should be able to localize state standards to address their unique needs. In partnership with local school boards, states should have the authority to control their curriculum policies, course options, graduation requirements, state assessments, and teacher evaluation systems. The federal government should set high expectations and help us to fund our essential civil rights mission, but the states need to control the path to success.
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Early Learning
High-quality early learning sets the foundation for a strong entry to kindergarten and long-term success in school, ultimately benefiting our students and our state in countless ways. Washington has been a national leader in research and program development for early learning. At OSPI, we partner in this work with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and they provide outstanding frameworks for student health, safety, and academic success. Our K-12 school districts are the largest providers of Head Start and Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) programs. I am committed, along with our partners, to create more efficiency, less regulation, and overall better outcomes for our early learning programs.
During my time as your State Superintendent, my office has led the way in early screening of 4-year-olds, so we can provide high quality programing BEFORE they become a struggling kindergarten student. These efforts have made a difference, and our data show that these critical pre-kindergarten supports are closing opportunity gaps in meaningful ways. Early learning needs to become a universal basic education right, and I will work hard to keep building the policy and budget steps necessary to support our youngest learners and their families in every county in this state!
Capital Budgets
Washington State has a deeply inequitable approach to funding school buildings and facilities, and our students pay the price by learning in buildings that are overcrowded, are behind on health and safety repairs, or are in need of modernization to keep up with evolving learning and teaching needs. Our state relies on an anti-democratic 60% supermajority for local bond votes, and only then do districts qualify for the state matching funds that they need for critical building repairs or replacements. This is a remarkable disadvantage for our rural communities and those who are not able to raise as much locally as districts in wealthier areas.
In my tenure as Superintendent, we have grown the Capital Budget to a record high for our rural communities. We have added rural grants, seismic retrofits, and mitigation funds where there is a risk to water from Lead contamination. We can do more! Washington State’s Capital Budget should reflect our public education values, by focusing more resources on school facilities, starting with air quality and water quality retrofits in every community across the state. The value of properties in your community should not be a barrier to safe, healthy, and high-quality learning spaces!
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Protecting our Environment and our Students’ Futures
As Superintendent, we have enhanced our learning standards to specifically address climate change within our overall science framework. We have and will continue to partner with a diverse group of advocates to secure additional funds for outdoor education, field STEM, and other opportunities that give our children a hands-on learning environment that brings science, and specifically climate science, to life. We will continue to support an electric bus conversion system that is sustainable and fully funded as part of basic education. Our OSPI team has secured record levels of funding to ensure clean air and clean water for our students and staff in classrooms across the state! Finally, the State Superintendent serves on the Board of Natural Resources to help manage trust-lands that are to be stewarded for all the people of Washington. My focus is on ensuring that our children have access to healthy older forests for learning and that our rural communities retain any revenue generated from responsible and sustainable timber harvests. The state’s school construction matching program should be solely paid for by general state revenues or state bond capacity, and it should not depend on timber harvests in rural communities to fund school construction in urban and suburban communities.
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School Meals
Decades of research reinforce that our students cannot learn when they are hungry. In my time as Superintendent, we have made free breakfast and/or lunch available to 465,000 more students. In most countries in the world, access to meals while at school is just part of basic education. It doesn’t mean every student and family wants or needs a meal, it means that it’s there for them if they need it. I will keep advancing budget requests every year until the Legislature ensures that every student who wants or needs breakfast or lunch gets it at no cost to the student or their family. This is the right thing to do for learning, and it would save thousands of dollars for our families. A family with a household income of $51,000 per year with two students in school spends about $2,330 out-of-pocket per year for school meals, totaling over $30,000 over that family’s total public school years. As income inequality and food inflation continue to erode the financial health of many families, universal access to meals is a powerful way to enhance student learning and provide essential financial support to Washington families with school-aged children.
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Dual Language Expansion
When our students are given the opportunity to become bilingual learners starting in kindergarten, they thrive! Not only do they master two languages, but they excel in their other content areas. Dual language opens the doors to future opportunities and it honors the diverse cultures and languages spoken in Washington and around the world. To give our students the best chance at future success, every family deserves the choice of learning in a dual-language model.
As Superintendent, I have prioritized dual language and now we have over 50 school districts providing this opportunity for their students and families. I will keep pushing the Legislature and our school districts to fund these programs until every family has the choice no matter where they live.