Local News

House Majority Leader Rep. Pat Sullivan, D-Covington, said Thursday that even if the state Senate quickly approves a proposed transportation package fueled by an increase in the gas tax, the measure won’t be heard in the House until lawmakers address education funding. Sullivan said a plan to fund the requirements of the Washington Supreme Court ruling known as…

A state lawmaker has proposed new legislation that would give the mayor of Seattle the power to appoint two members of the Seattle School Board. The bill will likely prove controversial. Under current law, the board has seven members, each elected to represent a different geographic region within Seattle. The legislation introduced Wednesday by state Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle, would allow a school board…

These are the kind of numbers everyone wants their campaign to have. Initiative 1351, a measure on the November ballot to increase school staffing and decrease class sizes of students, has a 42-point lead in a new Elway Poll released this morning. In the poll, 66 percent of those surveyed said they favored the measure, which would cost the…

Politics are heating up in South Seattle, where a new City Council candidate is calling her neck of the woods “neglected” in terms of public safety and economic development. Tammy Morales, 45, who runs a food policy consulting business and who lives in Seward Park with her husband and children, announced Wednesday she will run for the…

Another government proposal for increasing state dollars for Washington public schools was dropped into the already overloaded cart Tuesday. The proposal from Senate Democrats gives lawmakers another option for answering a Supreme Court order to improve the way education is paid for. The court’s last communication with the Legislature asked for a concrete plan by April…

OLYMPIA — Conservative Republican state senators joined with minority Democrats to defeat a teacher-evaluation bill Tuesday evening, dealing a rare defeat to the chamber’s majority leadership just as a key deadline passed. Supporters of Senate Bill 5246 said its defeat could restrict local school districts’ flexibility to spend about $40 million in federal funding. The proposal would require…

House Democrats set the high bar for state spending in a proposed budget released Wednesday that would raise roughly $1.3 billion in additional tax revenue and plow the same amount into K-12 education to comply with a state Supreme Court mandate.

Overall, the House proposal would spend about $34.5 billion. By comparison, Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed a $34.4 billion spending plan and Senate Republicans, $33.3 billion. The GOP budget is the only one that does not include additional money from taxes.

The House Democrats’ proposal is similar to Inslee’s in the mix of tax breaks it would close, including repealing tax exemptions for bottled water and the sales tax exemption for people living outside the state.

OLYMPIA — If you’ve been following Gov. Jay Inslee’s position on a Republican proposal to grade all public schools A-F, we’ll excuse you for being a little confused. The gist of the debate: Schools are already evaluated in adjective form in the state’s achievement index, but some say the adjectives (exemplary, very good, good, fair and struggling)…

OLYMPIA — State House Republicans unveiled an education budget proposal Thursday that would increase K-12 spending by $556 million without raising taxes over the next two years. The budget would dedicate $817 million to respond to a state Supreme Court order to increase basic education funding, including by expanding full-day kindergarten, reducing class sizes in kindergarten…

OLYMPIA — The state Senate narrowly approved two contentious education policy bills Wednesday after a heated debate. The bills, to give A-F letter grades to schools and to give principals a veto in teacher placements, are top Republican priorities but are strongly opposed by Democrats. The letter grades passed 26-23, while the principal veto passed 27-22 —…