North Mason schools take stock of legislative session

Kirk Boxleitner | May 04, 20230

North Mason School Board President Arla Shephard Bull, the board’s legislative representative, shared information April 20 from the final week of the legislative session. The board was waiting on news regarding education-related items in the budget.

Shepherd Bull said it was “an interesting legislative session,” noting the Washington State School Directors’ Association’s tracked 120 education-related bills from the start of the session. “Thirty-five were left as of last Friday,” she said.

Superintendent Dana Rosenbach provided an update on House Bill 1550, intended to help children in need of additional preparation to be successful in kindergarten by establishing a transition-to-kindergarten program.

Shepherd Bull and Rosenbach referred to it as the “TK bill,” short for “transitional kindergarten,” and as of April 20, Rosenbach was able to report it was “still alive,” albeit “amended considerably” as it moved from the state House to the Senate.

Rosenbach added, “We have heard that the sponsors in the House are pretty firm about the language they started with,” so she worried it might stall once its language needed to be reconciled between the two branches.

“From a school district standpoint, the amendments the Senate placed on the bill made it much more doable and in line with our efforts to serve the needs of kids in our community,” Rosenbach said. “It would be a bill we could live with.”

The bill ultimately passed in both chambers and was sent to the governor on the session’s final day, April 23.

“I’ve heard from the various representatives we have in Olympia, our policy wonks and our lobbyist, that this has been a really hard year for education,” Rosenbach said. “The legislators who are in the majority right now are really not interested in talking about the needs of education this year. Trying to get any of the things that we need to improve the budget for kids, and what’s available to help schools do what they need to do to support kids, has been a huge uphill climb.”

Rosenbach deemed Mason County relatively fortunate and rated all three of its legislative representatives as “very pro-education, and very helpful for us, but we’ll need to reach out to those in surrounding areas.”

Rosenbach recalled “a very influential member of the House of Representatives” questioning why educators continually requested more money for special education, to which Rosenbach responded by asserting “every time (the Legislature) meets, they do give us a lot of money, but they don’t give us the amount we told them we need to do the job. They never give us the amount we need. They give us a small part of that, (so) it’s never getting the job done, and the job’s just getting bigger.”

In other news, Rosenbach shared a thank-you letter from the Guatemalan Consulate in Seattle, which North Mason has built “a strong relationship” over the past year and a half “to help them help our families do the things they need to do, to be in compliance with every rule and regulation that they need to be.”

The Guatemalan Consulate has hosted two events, outside of the school day, so Guatemalans living in the state, either individuals or families, could meet with representatives of the consulate, regarding various services they might need.

“Sometimes, it’s really hard for individuals to make it to the consulate in Seattle to get whatever help they need,” Rosenbach said. “If they can do that out in their communities, then they can be more effective participants in their communities going forward.”