Big 3 Briefing, Week 3

It’s week 3 of the 2025 legislative session in Washington State. Megan Larkin is helping us follow the education bills related to the Big 3 priorities embraced by the major education advocacy organizations across Washington (WASSDA, WASA, and WSPTA). 

--> SIGN IN on special education bills in Appropriations.

See our Show Notes

Each person’s opinions are their own. Contact us with comments, questions, or corrections at hello@rainydayrecess.org.

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E11 - Big 3 Briefing, Week 3

Rainy Day Recess, January 28, 2025

See our Show Notes 

[00:00:02] Christie Robertson: Welcome to Rainy Day Recess. This is Christie Robertson and I am back with Megan Larkin.... 

[00:00:07] Megan Larkin: Hello.

[00:00:08] Christie Robertson: ...for our series on the Washington state legislature that we are calling the “Big 3 Briefing”. We started off with a 101 episode a couple of weeks ago where Megan went through how the legislature works and how a bill works its way through the whole process. And then we did another episode about how to sign in on bills. And today we are going to talk about bills that are in the Senate and the House that relate to the Big 3 and where they are in their process.

[00:00:45] Megan Larkin: Yep, very exciting. 

[00:00:46] Christie Robertson: So Megan. Yeah. Do you want to just remind people of what the Big 3 is?

[00:00:53] Megan Larkin: Sure! The Big 3 are Special Education, Pupil Transportation, and MSOC (which stands for Materials, Supplies, and Operating Costs). These are very basic things that all of Washington's 295 districts need to just have schools. So it's something that everybody can get behind as being really important.

[00:01:19] Christie Robertson: That's a good way to put it: "to have schools". The situation is very dire and now there's a cool new tool where you can see just how dire the situation is for your district. 

[00:01:33] Megan Larkin: So, the Association of Educational Service Districts, or ESDs, put together this really cool tool - a Big 3 data hub. It is going to be linked in the show notes, and it breaks out by district, and then also by county, just how big these gaps in transportation, special ed, and MSOC really are. And the numbers are just staggering. So for those of you interested in data or in doing advocacy work, I'd really encourage you to check this out because seeing these numbers reported is really powerful.

[00:02:11] Christie Robertson: Yep, you can look at every single district and its really clear colorful bars to bring to your legislators to show how underfunded we are. So thank you for sharing that. 

[00:02:23] Megan Larkin: Yes. Yeah. An excellent thing to give to legislators. It can show exactly how underfunded is the district that you're in.

[00:02:31] Christie Robertson: Now, one of the biggest hurdles in the process of making legislative change is to actually have bills introduced to address them. And we've got that going!

Senate

[00:02:42] Christie Robertson: Let's start with the Senate. Can you tell us about the bills that we have around the Big 3 there?

[00:02:47] Megan Larkin: Yes. On the Senate side, for transportation, we have Senate Bill 5187, which was offered by Early Learning and K-12 Committee Chair Lisa Wellman, Democrat from Mercer Island. 

We have 5192, which is an MSOC bill by Senator Nobles. 

And we actually had two Special Education bills. One, 5307, came at the request of the state superintendent. And another very similar bill, 5263, was offered jointly by Senators Pedersen and Braun, who are the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, respectively. So that's a bill with a lot of juice behind it.

[00:03:38] Christie Robertson: And there was a hearing on all four of these bills last week.

[00:03:43] Megan Larkin: Yes. The first of many hurdles was this hearing in the Senate Early Learning and K-12 committee, which was on Wednesday, the 22nd of last week. We did an episode that mentioned this hearing where we asked folks to sign in Pro. So we want to make sure that we're telling you what happened at the hearing now. 

And the news is good. Everybody from the education advocacy community, everybody from superintendents, like Dr. Jones from SPS was there, to education service district leaders, to WASBO, who's the business officers of schools, to WSSDA, which is the school board directors, teachers unions, Washington State PTA. Everyone was there, which was great to see. And they all gave testimony around the Big 3 Senate bills.

Largely the testimony around the transportation and the MSOC bills was "we are in real trouble. We need more money for these. Here's some improvements that we think you could offer.” 

For example, in the bill it states that OSPI doesn't need to bring forth a new transportation formula until 2028. Melissa Stone, who's on the board at Washington State PTA gave testimony that “that's three more years of chronic underfunding. That is too much.” 

[00:04:49] Melissa Stone: This bill begins to address the flawed formula that has led to underfunding in districts across the state. Please consider moving the date up from 2028 for the OSPI report on transportation data and make recommendations for a new formula. Let's try to close the gap quicker than three more years of underfunding. 

[00:05:12] Megan Larkin: And it was so cool to then have OSPI testify and be like, “yeah, we're ready. We don't need three years, move that up.” 

[00:05:49] Christie Robertson: Here's Senator Paul Harris asking a question and Tyler Munch from OSPI answering the question.

[00:05:57] Paul Harris: So Tyler, I appreciate that. So, the three years, it sounds like you can react much faster than that. Is that correct? 

[00:06:02] Tyler Munsch: That our agency could move faster? Well, I would say we, we had a plan and uh, I don't think the legislature was prepared to fund it, I think was the issue. Yeah. We're ready to go. 

[00:06:12] Megan Larkin: So it was a lot of stakeholder groups giving feedback about how to improve these bills.

[00:06:20] Christie Robertson: And then another piece of testimony that we wanted to play was from the Lake Stevens superintendent. 

[00:06:24] Megan Larkin: Yes. So Lake Steven Superintendent Mary Templeton spoke about what she could have bought with all the money that she had to spend above and beyond what the state funds for MSOC special education and transportation. So for Lake Stevens, that number was $26 million combined over five years. She gave examples of all of the cool stuff that money could have been spent on if the state had fully funded MSOC, special education, and student transportation, as is its constitutional duty. 

[00:06:59] Mary Templeton: As a superintendent, one of the things that you get to experience is paying the bills. And as you sit at your desk, and you sign off on all the things, you really scrutinize, and you’re looking, trying to make ends meet. And you're like, "oh my God, how much is that utility bill? How much is that for that textbook adoption?" And the list goes on and on. 

For us, by the way, it is $16 million for the last five years that we've spent on MSOC. That was money that should've been spent, or at least was intended to be spent, on our children in a different way. 

For us in Lake Stevens is $26 million over the last five years that we have spent on special education, transportation, and MSOC. I did some number crunching, and here's what I would like to buy with some of that money. 

I could have bought two mental health therapists in every school for every year, for the last five years if I would've had money from MSOC. I could have offered a club for every elementary school, every day after school. Cross-country, theater, technology, robotics, music, orchestra - those are the things that our children need for the future. 

[00:08:03] Megan Larkin: This is a really good reminder of the types of stories that we can tell as advocates that resonate with people. Because who would not want two mental health therapists in every school in their district?

[00:08:19] Christie Robertson: Yeah, absolutely. Great testimony. 

And also we asked people to sign in. And people did!

[00:08:26] Megan Larkin: Yes, they did. It was so exciting, and thank you so much for doing that. 

For the Pedersen/Braun special education bill, 

• 2,696 people signed in total 
• 2,432 signing in Pro

For the Wellman transportation bill,

• 2,467 people signed in total
• 2,422 of which were Pro

And for the Nobles MSOC bill, 

• 3,637 people signed in total, 
• 2,541 of which were Pro. 

And you can see how there's a bigger gap on the Nobles bill, because that's where the Conservative Ladies of Washington showed up and got a bunch of people to sign in Con, in order to make it look like the MSOC bill was controversial. But because the education advocacy community rallied, we had enough Pro sign-ins that it didn't actually look that way. It is still very clear that the majority of Washingtonians, the vast majority, want MSOC fully funded.

[00:09:45] Christie Robertson: More than twice as many Pro signatures, it looks like.

[00:09:48] Megan Larkin: Yeah. Yeah. And then the special education bill that was requested by the state superintendent, that committee chair Lisa Wellman offered, had a total of 

• 1,602 sign-ins,
• 1,369 of which were Pro. 

The reason I believe that these numbers are lower is because fewer calls to action went out around. Lisa Wellman's state superintendent-requested special education bill.

[00:10:22] Christie Robertson: And why do you think that was Megan? Because to me it seemed like the Wellman special education bill had more going for it.

[00:10:31] Megan Larkin: I don't have psychic powers or a crystal ball, tragically, but I can speculate from an informed perspective because Pedersen and Braun are such heavy hitters. You can definitely make the argument that that bill had a greater chance of moving forward. People might have thought, Okay, we're going to back the bill that we think is going to make it out of committee. And then we're going to advocate for the parts of the other special education bill that we like to go into the Pedersen and Braun special education bill. 

For example, there was a thing about quarterly payments in the Wellman special education bill that, even when Pedersen was offering his own bill, he was like, “Oh yeah, I love that.”

[00:11:28] Jamie Pedersen: I like what Senator Wellman's bill suggests in terms of helping some particularly smaller districts with some of the cashflow issues. So I hope that is included in part of what eventually emerges from the committee. 

[00:11:39] Megan Larkin: So we're still early on enough in the process that advocating for the specific thing that you want to see in a bill, like that's still effective. Because during executive action, or when the bills are on the floor of the Senate, this is when people can offer an amendment, add things, subtract things. So it's really important to keep advocating for that specific thing that you want in a bill, not just the bill itself.

[00:12:15] Christie Robertson: And Megan, would you say that most bills do not go through in the original way that they're proposed? 

[00:12:21] Megan Larkin: Yes. Almost all bills are amended or changed in some way. So it's really important to do this kind of tracking of the life cycle of a bill that we're doing here to make sure that the final version of the bill actually has the important things that you want to see in it. Because it could be totally stripped out of everything that you loved, or a bill that you weren't that excited about could have a bunch of substitutions and amendments in there, and now you are excited about that bill.

[00:12:51] Christie Robertson: Yeah, and from talking to folks who advocate for special education, I can add that there are several things in 5307, the state superintendent request bill, that we felt we're missing in the other bill, and so those are things that we will want to advocate for including in the bill that goes forward. And those include the quarterly payments that Megan was talking about. And then some funding for the superintendent's office. I believe part of the funding is to identify disproportionality and try to combat it. I believe some of the funding is also for working toward inclusion, which has been shown to benefit kids getting special ed services and all kids when kids can be educated together.

[00:13:22] Megan Larkin: Yes, it's going to be important to advocate for those quarterly payments and for that funding for inclusionary practices to be included in the Pedersen/Braun bill, because it does look like that's the bill that's going to move forward.

[00:13:51] Christie Robertson: Yes. I do want to say one thing about these bills with regards to inclusion, and that's that neither of them address the study that the legislature did about how special education is operating in our schools, especially with regards to inclusion. A big report was released at the beginning of this session. And the take home from it was that the legislature, if it wants to have a goal of inclusion, that they should state that goal explicitly and that they should build legislation around it. So far, inclusion has been done through a back alley kind of way, through some funding that isn't tied to legislation. It's very voluntary, and it's very piecemeal. And other states are taking a much more explicit approach and therefore a more effective approach. So that's what neither of these bills does, and that's something that we're going to need to tackle if we want to do special education more effectively in the future.

[00:15:10] Megan Larkin: Yes. And now is the time in the process where we can advocate for that. That could absolutely be added into the Pedersen/Braun bill, or perhaps some of the bills on the House side.

[00:15:24] Christie Robertson: That's a good point. I shouldn't be so resigned. Yeah, we could request that the money that's being shunted to the superintendent in this back alley way is funded explicitly in these bills.

[00:15:41] Megan Larkin: I think this speaks to how important and empowering it is to know the basics of the legislative process because then you know when to advocate for adding in all of these important things that you want to see in the bill. 

[00:15:59] Christie Robertson: Yeah, totally. 

[00:16:01] Megan Larkin: Is there a special education advocacy group that we can shout out for folks to follow their action alerts? So that they can advocate for these things that you mentioned?

[00:16:11] Christie Robertson: The ARC of King County and the ARC of Washington are very strong advocacy organizations. They focus on intellectual and developmental disabilities, which includes autism, and they really track a lot of disability related bills. There's also Disability Rights Washington. And neither of those are specifically focused on education, but they track special education bills. 

In terms of special education, there's not really a statewide advocacy organization. The Special Education PTSA in Seattle is a group to follow. But there's not like a statewide equivalent, unfortunately. One other org I'll shout out is the League of Education Voters, which does track a lot of special education bills specifically.

And so Megan, what happens next with these bills? They had their hearing in Early Learning but they're still in that committee, right?

[00:17:10] Megan Larkin: They are still in that committee, and they are scheduled for executive action on Thursday, January the 30th at 1030 AM. 

[00:17:19] Christie Robertson: And what does that mean? 

[00:17:20] Megan Larkin: So the committee is going to go through the bills and look at the bill report, which summarizes the testimony and things that people gave last week, and then they're going to consider making some of these changes that we talked about.

For example, Pedersen seemed excited about adding the quarterly payments to his and Senator Braun's special education bill. So perhaps the committee might add that in at this time. We aren't allowed to testify during this executive action, but usually you can watch by either going there in person or by watching the stream on the legislature's website.

The Billion Dollar Bake Sale is scheduled to be down in Olympia on Thursday the 30th. So it'll be really interesting to see what those folks do around the committee hearings and things that are on the date where they're in Olympia.

[00:18:20] Christie Robertson: Yeah, it actually turns out to be a big day for education on Thursday when they're having their big rally. So that's pretty cool.

[00:18:28] Megan Larkin: Yes, it was very fortuitously timed because there is also an important hearing in the House.

House

[00:18:35] Christie Robertson: Great transition. So let's talk about the House.

[00:18:40] Megan Larkin: So in the Senate, it was very clear early on what the main Big 3 bills were going to be. Because there was one transportation bill offered by the chair of the Early Learning and K-12 committee. There was the MSOC bill that another committee member put forth. And we have the Pedersen/Braun special education bill that has the majority and minority leader of the Senate. And then the committee chair, Lisa Wellman, also offered the OSPI requested special education bill. Given who is offering these bills and who is requesting them, it was pretty clear like, "okay, these are the bills". And it's probably going to be the Pedersen special education bill that moves forward and the OSPI requests are going to be folded into that bill.

In the House, there is less clarity. But all of those bills have been scheduled for a hearing in the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday, January 30th at 4 p.m. 

[00:19:45] Christie Robertson: And that's just the special education bills though, right?

[00:19:48] Megan Larkin: Yes, just the special education bills. There is a transportation bill in the House and a pretty great MSOC bill in the House. But from what I'm seeing right now, I do not believe there's action on them next week so we can perhaps talk about that in a later podcast.

[00:20:04] Christie Robertson: And just to review, if there's an MSOC bill that's going forward successfully in the Senate, there doesn't necessarily have to be one also going through in the House at the same time.

[00:20:16] Megan Larkin: Yes, so at the end of the whole legislative process, only a handful of bills will remain standing. So, like, both the House and the Senate MSOC bill are probably not going to make it through. 

[00:20:31] Christie Robertson: They talk about one being the “vehicle” at some point. They start talking about either the House or the Senate bill being the vehicle.

[00:20:38] Megan Larkin: Yes, so that'll be later on in the process. Either the House or the Senate bill for each of the Big 3 will become the “vehicle” for all of the things around that area. So we might see aspects of the House MSOC bill folded into the Senate one or vice versa. 

[00:20:59] Christie Robertson: So this is kind of the stage where we're waiting to see which bills rise to the top.

[00:21:04] Megan Larkin: Yes, we're waiting to see which bills rise to the top. Which makes it really important to keep advocating for the things you want to see in those bills. So like the Senate MSOC bill, for example, there, in my opinion, needs to be a lot of things added to it. Because it is a starting point, but it needs way more stuff in there. So we can keep advocating around that, and by the end of the session, either the Senate or the House bill will be the vehicle and hopefully our advocacy has been effective and the last bill standing has the things that we'd like to see in it.

[00:21:40] Christie Robertson: Great. So should we talk about the House bills that are going to be heard in appropriations on Thursday?

[00:21:47] Megan Larkin: Yes. There is less clarity around special education bills in the House. We had those two bills in the Senate, the Pedersen one and then the state superintendent request one. And they were both pretty comprehensive and had many similar points. This is less so in the House. And I know, Christie, you have lived experience and advocacy experience around special education. So I'm wondering what you think of these bills that are offered up in the House around special education.

[00:22:22] Christie Robertson: Yeah, so first of all, you provided me with a really cool chart that compares all of the different special education bills, that was created by the Washington State PTA. It's very helpful, since there are currently five special education related bills with all sorts of different pieces and parts and numbers associated with the many complicated aspects of special education.

I think the most comprehensive, best bill that's in the House is HB 1310, which is brought by my representative, actually - Pollet. And it was also a state superintendent request bill. It does remove the cap on the number of kids that can be served by special education in a district. Immediately, which is great. Again, we talked about quarterly distribution of safety net funds. 

[00:22:47] Megan Larkin: It is also the companion bill to the Wellman special education bill in the Senate. So I believe it's identical.

[00:23:22] Christie Robertson: Yes. There's one thing that is really important that is in HB 1357, which was brought by Monica Stonier. That bill has a grant to support inclusionary practices. And this is a pilot program, which is the most that any of the bills offer, but it's really insufficient because there's been a pilot program for quite a while. And truly what the legislature needs to do is put its mind to tackling inclusionary practices. 

[00:23:47] Megan Larkin: So the hope is, or not just the hope... the reality is, at the end of the legislative process, probably only one of these bills will be left standing. And we want to advocate for that bill to have all of the things that we'd like in it. Like those quarterly payments, and then more funding for inclusionary practices, and getting rid of the cap immediately. We want to advocate for all of those things to be in the final bill, whichever one it is.

[00:24:22] Christie Robertson: Yes. So I think a great bill coming out of the House would be Pollet's bill, with funding for an expanded version of what's in Stonier's bill for inclusionary practices.

So, hey! That's what's going on in the House and the Senate, about the Big 3 bills, in week three of this legislative session.

So, what should we say in conclusion, Megan? 

[00:24:56] Megan Larkin: I want to highlight just how cool the message discipline is that we're seeing here. It does not always happen. And you can see how powerful it is to have everybody in the advocacy community line up and all say, unequivocally, “we need more money for MSOC, we need more money for transportation, we need more money for special education, and here are the practices that we want to see included and supported by legislation.”

This is extremely powerful because something that happens sometimes is legislators will play groups off of each other. Or, there will be disparate pieces of legislation, and there won't be a critical mass of legislators focusing on this one area. So this message discipline is really powerful. It leads to really powerful and successful hearings like the one that happened with the Big 3 on the 22nd. 

Thank you again to everybody who signed in Pro. That was really impactful. That was a way for the community to also participate in backing the Big 3. 

I think this also speaks to how important it is for advocacy groups to talk to each other and to not see each other as rivals, but instead to focus on the things that we have in common. And I don't mean that in a, like, hearts and rainbows kind of way. I mean that in a purely strategic, pragmatic way. Because if we fight with each other, we're not all backing the same things. We're not having these successful hearings. 

Message discipline can't always happen. We can't always form coalitions, but many times we can. So I think it's important to recognize the power that's in that, the power that's in collaboration.

[00:26:50] Christie Robertson: I mean, if this coalition is fruitful and we have a successful legislative session, it will be really interesting to see where they go next.

[00:27:01] Megan Larkin: Yes, so I do hope that once we tackle MSOC, Special Education and Transportation, the coalition can turn its attention to something else that benefits all of Washington's 295 districts. Because one of the few upsides of there being so many problems and so much underfunding in education is there's a lot of areas that we need to work on. So, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to focus on something else next term with the same degree of collaboration and discipline.

[00:27:35] Christie Robertson: We will be back next week to talk about how things went in the hearings and executive sessions that happened this week and talk about what comes next in the great journey of these Big 3 bills.

[00:27:49] Megan Larkin: Yes, go Big 3 go.

[00:27:52] Christie Robertson: Let's go out with Senator Wellman.

[00:27:54] Lisa Wellman: And so I'm glad we had the opportunity to present this to you today and make you the public and those in the room with us today aware of the situation and hopefully support us as we continue to press forward with this challenging situation in a time when our state has some economic challenges. But this has got to be our number one responsibility is the paramount duty of the state. And we intend to honor that duty. Thank you very much. We are adjourned. 

[00:28:28] Christie Robertson: Let us know if these legislative updates are helpful to you, or what else you're curious or confused about, by emailing. hello@rainydayrecess.org.

Go to our website to see our show notes or to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. 

Stay curious, stay cozy and join us next time on Rainy Day Recess.