With the start of the 2025 session of the state legislature just over a month away, Washington lawmakers are already pre-filing bills for their colleagues to consider, including several that would significantly impact kids, families, and schools. The session starts on January 13 and ends 105 days later, on April 27.
Between the opening and closing of the session, lawmakers must pass the 2025-2026 biennial budget. That process is expected to be painful for all state agencies and departments as representatives and senators grapple with a projected $10 billion state budget deficit.
As in the past, education advocates, educators, and parents say they plan to push lawmakers to adequately fund public schools in Washington—including covering the full cost of teaching kids with special educational needs. Inadequate state funding has left many districts with budget deficits. Seattle Public Schools, for example, faces a $100 million deficit for the 2025-26 school year, a hole that has been at the center of a painful yearlong school closure debate. Washington public schools superintendent Chris Reykdal has asked for a $3 billion increase in school spending despite Inslee’s state deficit announcement. This week’s early days of bill pre-filing incuded several education-related bills.
Pre-filing a bill is the first step on the path to becoming a law, the final step being the governor’s signature. Pre-filing does not guarantee the legislature will hear a bill, but it starts the ball of possibility rolling.
Here are some of the bills of impact to kids, families, and schools pre-filed this week:
Senate Bill 5007 and House Bill 1020: Dropout and absenteeism prevention and dropout re-engagement
Bipartisan SB 5007, sponsored by Sen. Wellman (D-Mercer Island) and Sen. John Braun (R-Centralia), would set aside funds for Washington educational service districts (in collaboration with OSPI) to train teachers and other school staff in ways to reduce student absenteeism and truancy and to develop early warning systems that “identify and locate students who are chronically absent and connect them with the necessary supports to engage them in academic learning.” According to the bill, “necessary supports” may include family engagement, basic needs like food and clothing, transportation, mental and behavioral health care, and incentives to stay in school. The bill would also set aside funds to create an OSPI “Building Bridges” grant program to support “comprehensive dropout prevention, intervention, and retrieval systems, including support for students who are chronically absent.”
House Bill 1020, introduced by Rep. Clyde Shavers (D-Island County), is also seeks to address high school dropout rates by having school districts create agreements with colleges and community organization to provide services that help dropouts earn a high school diploma. If a school district doesn’t have an agreement or contract with an educational service district, community or technical college, or community-based organization to provide those service for eligible students in the district, any one of those groups would be able to petition the district to do so. The bill is aimed at high schools students under age 21.
Senate Bill 5012: Create an inter-school athletics “middle path” for gender separation
Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-Auburn, Bonney Lake, Carbonado, Edgewood, Enumclaw, and Sumner) says he is seeking to create a “middle path” for school sports that “protects biological women and girls while allowing transgender athletes to continue competing.” SB 5012 is this year’s attempt to separate school sports into biological sex groups. A bill introduced in 2023 did not pass. Under the bill pre-filed this week, inter-school sports would use the following groupings:
- Students who have the same kind of sex chromosome (xx) who identify as a woman or girl;
- Students who have the same type of sex chromosome (xx) who identify as a man or boy;
- Students who have two different types of sex chromosomes (xy) who identify as a man or boy;
- Students who have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (xy) who identify as a woman or girl;
- Students who do not meet the criteria in 1-5
The bill stipulates that a student’s eligibility for a particular grouping “may” be determined by any medical doctor. The bill would apply to only grades 7 and higher.
Fortunato has said that the bill is not about “excluding people” but rather “about fairness and equity in sports competitions.” That position is likely to be contested by numerous transgender advocacy groups.
“While athletes identifying as a different gender and competing has become a prominent issue in sports, the reality is that there are undeniable biological differences between the sexes that must be accounted for,” he said in a statement. “We can balance the desire of athletes whose biological sex doesn’t match their expression while keeping school sports fair and safe.”
In addition to reorganizing interscholastic sports programs, the bill would establish protections for students, schools, and organizations overseeing school-based athletics to shield them from retaliation or complaints.
Senate Bill B 5003, Senate Bill 5004 and House Bill 1011:Enhance school security
Sen. Nikki Torres (R-Yakima) is determined to increase safety at Washington’s public schools by introducing Senate bills 5003 and 5004. SB 5003 would set aside state funds to improve school safety, covering things like the installation of panic buttons, greater school entrance security, fencing, live video feeds and two-way communication between schools and law enforcement, remote access to doors, technology for better perimeter security, and interconnection with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chief’s alert and communication system.
SB 5004 would require each school in Washington to send OSPI a progress report on implementing its emergency response system.
House Bill 1011, submitted Rep. Cyndy Jacobson (R-Puyallup), also addresses enhancing security in public schools. The bill would allow OSPI to provide grants for physical school safety projects that “advance the safety or security of a school facility. Examples of eligible project types include: Design and construction of security vestibules; purchase and installation of metal detectors. facility key card 16 access, remote door access, panic buttons, or silent alarms; fencing; lighting; and crime prevention through environmental design projects.
Senate Bill 5001: “Ditch the switch” AKA lose daylight saving time
If anything is bipartisan, it’s the loathing of the daylight saving time change in spring and the return to standard time in the fall. This year’s bipartisan effort to “ditch the switch” (in other words, make Pacific Standard Time permanent) is sponsored by Sens. Jeff Wilson (R-Longview) and Manka Dhingra (D-Redmond). Keep in mind, similar bills have been brought to the legislature through the years and failed the gauntlet.
“Let’s end this nuisance once and for all,” Wilson said in a statement about the pre-filed bill. “No more springing forward and falling back. Let’s set our clocks one more time and make that the end of it.” Expect debate about which time is best to stick to, and for many parents to be hoping it passes.
Senate Bill 5002: Stopping immigration “sanctuary” status in Washington
Along with separate sports teams for transgender kids, Sen. Fortunato wants to end a Washington tool for the protection of immigrants with SB 5002, which states, “A state entity, law enforcement agency, or local governmental entity may not adopt or have in effect a sanctuary policy.”
In 2019, Washington passed the Keep Washington Working Act (KWW), which made it one of the nation’s few “sanctuary states.” The law prohibits local law enforcement agencies from asking specific questions or engaging in federal immigration enforcement practices that, for years, led federal immigration agencies to Washington residents. SB 5002 could break the sanctuary designation, potentially separating thousands of immigrant families through deportation. As of 2023, there were 1.21 million immigrants in Washington state (15.5% of the state’s population). While passage of the bill is unlikely in a Democrat-led legislature and with Democrat Bob Ferguson in the governor’s chair, it is one many families will be watching closely.
Senate Bill 5008: Supporting the use of assessment, diagnostic, and learning tools in public schools
Sponsored by Sens. Wellman and Braun, SB 5008 would allow OSPI to create a grant program to support the public school use of assessment, diagnostic, and learning tools for students in grades K-12 in math and English language arts. The program’s goal? “To help schools and districts purchase or maintain access to a digital platform with tools that will identify students’ individual needs and help monitor student progress and growth.”
According to bill language: “The legislature recognizes that [state law] requires the OSPI to provide school districts with a collection of diagnostic tools that educators may use to evaluate the academic status of individual students. Further, these tools must be designed to be inexpensive, easily administered, and quickly and easily scored, with results provided in a format that may be easily shared with parents and students. The legislature intends to continue to support the use of assessment, diagnostic, and learning tools by establishing a temporary grant program to provide funding to help school districts 2 and public schools purchase or maintain access to these tools.”
Get involved
Take these steps to let your lawmakers know how you feel about any proposed bills:
- Go to the Washington State Legislature Bill Information webpage, find the bill you are interested in, and sign up to testify or to let lawmakers know you are PRO or CON
- Contact your lawmaker about any bill and ask how you can make your voice heard:
- Contact members of the Washington State House of Representatives
- Contact members of the Washington State Senate
- Sign up for updates from All Together for Seattle Schools, a parent-led advocacy group pushing for lawmakers to amply fund public schools to keep districts like Seattle out of debt.
- Sign up for updates from the Children’s Alliance, a statewide child advocacy organization.
- Sign up for updates from the League of Education Voters, a statewide education advocacy organization.
- Sign up for updates from the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a statewide advocacy organization committed to stopping gun violence.
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