2025 Legislative Session Update, Week 3 – Fiscal and Federal Uncertainty

Picture of Ben Mitchell

Ben Mitchell

Director of Advocacy & Policy, Foundation for Tacoma Students

At this point in the legislative session, and for the next couple of weeks, lawmakers and advocates are dealing with the peak volume of new legislation. Things will ebb by the end of February, and by then we’ll have a sense of what is actually possible this year in terms of new policy. 

The elephant in the room is the operating budget deficit of at least $12 billion dollars over the next four years. Governor Ferguson has been consistent in saying that his priority is to find ways to reduce spending before considering new or increased taxes, and his budget office sent guidance to all state agencies on putting together proposals for reducing their budgets.

Governor Ferguson directed cabinet agencies to find at least six percent in spending reductions, but notably his directions spare K-12 education and community and technical colleges. Public four-year universities don’t get the same reprieve, and are asked to identify spending reductions of at least three percent.

The budget environment has definitely cast a pall on the mood of state government, and has created a huge amount of uncertainty about what will actually happen in terms of policy. When it comes to our issues, in broad strokes, it seems like there’s bipartisan energy to increase basic education funding in the K-12 system. Higher education interest groups are in a more defensive posture, arguing correctly, that their sector is the engine of economic growth and social mobility in Washington, and that any cuts to things like financial aid would be mortgaging our future. 

How this will all shake out is very much TBD. As an advocate we’re trying to stay focused on the legislation that connects to our policy platform, and make the best analytical arguments we can for the things that we think matter the most. But the reality this year is that everyone’s pet policy idea, at least the ones that cost money, need to have a ready lever to cut down their cost when it feels like that will inevitably need to happen. 

Beyond all the state-level stuff, we want to acknowledge that it’s been a crazy couple of weeks at the federal level, with President Trump announcing and sort-of rescinding all kinds of executive orders and spending freezes that affect K-12 and higher education. Much of which seems plainly illegal and at odds with what used to be a conservative principle of local control of schools. It’s created a fog that’s hard to see through right now, and it seems like it’s intentional at some level.

Our top priority bills are on schedule so far

There are two bill that are our top priorities this legislative session:

These are different versions of the same core idea – which is to expand an existing pilot program that is associated with promising results in getting financial aid for college into the hands of more students. 

The program in question is called the Financial Aid Outreach and Completion Pilot. It’s been in existence since 2022, and is run by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges in three pilot sites currently.

The data on the pilot program so far shows its promise:

  • In the two pilot regions, the rates of students completing financial aid applications increased dramatically and well above the statewide average between 2022 and 2023.

  • Based on that data, we’ve modeled what the results would be if those trends carried over to a potential statewide expansion:

    • More than 3,200 additional students completing a financial aid application.

    • Nearly 3,000 new students directly enrolling in college.

    • More than $13.5 million dollars in new federal Pell Grant funds in the pockets of our students, and that we currently leave on the table in DC.

The great news at the end of week 3 of both bills have been voted out of their respective policy committees with very solid bipartisan support. That means we’ve beaten level 1 in Legislative Session – The Video Game:

  • Level 1: Get voted out of policy committee in house of origin (House or Senate)

  • Level 2: Get voted out of fiscal committee in house of origin

  • Level 3: Get approved by Rules committee to move to a vote of the full chamber

  • Level 4: Get majority vote of full house of origin

  • Levels 5-8: Switch to opposite chamber, repeat steps 1-4 over there

  • Level 9: Get signed into law by Governor

There’s still a long way to go, and Level 2 is going to be much harder because it’s not clear if this policy is going to be a high enough priority to garner new funding in a year when the state budget is projected to be underwater. 

Related to this, the Senate and House bills are now quite different from each other. They started out as nearly identical, but for the House Bill to get voted out of the Postsecondary Education Committee we needed to cut down on the projected cost of the legislation. To do that, we helped put together what’s called a substitute bill. 

Bills can be changed at any level during the process, and the options for lawmakers are to either introduce amendments to the language, or if it’s a more substantial change, simply swap out the entire bill for a new substitute.

The new substitute bill for HB 1136 skinnies down the cost by doing two things:

  1. Instead of expanding the outreach specialist program statewide, it proposes an expansion to just two new regions in the state.

  2. Strikes out entirely a complimentary element that would have created a financial aid training program for teachers, counselors, community partners and parents.

Working with Representative Leavitt and our peers at the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, we’re trying to get the projected cost of the bill down substantially. It’s a strategy driven by the overall budget dynamics, and we hope gives the legislation a fighting chance in the fiscal committee. 

The Senate Bill on the other hand remains intact so far – proposing a full statewide expansion, and the financial aid training program. But the budget reality isn’t any different in the Senate. It’s still early, and in the next few weeks we’ll have a better handle on what’s possible.

The building blocks for an affordable and accessible higher education

If you scan our bill tracker for high priority bills in higher education, you’ll pick up on our stance that higher education must be affordable for poor and middle class students; and that it needs to be easy to go from high school to postsecondary education. 

On the first point, there are bills in the Senate and House to expand the reach of our best-in-the-nation College Promise program, the Washington College Grant. On the second point, there are bills in the Senate and House to formalize an already existing program of guaranteed admissions at public 4-year universities in the state.

Here’s where these two priorities stand: (😁 = Very good shape; 🙂 = good shape; 😬 = dicey; 😵 = dead; 🤔 = I have no idea).

  • Senate Bill 5402 and House Bill 1568 – Modifying financial aid eligibility

    • Status – 🙂 (Level 1)

    • The Senate Bill had a very positive hearing on Jan. 30. The House Bill will be heard on Feb. 5, and should have a strong showing too.

    • What these bills do:

      • They are identical companions and they propose to expand the reach of the Washington College Grant to make attendance at any public 2-year or 4-year college or university tuition free for families making up to 70% of the state median family income. Roughly $93,000 annually for a family of four.

      • Families who make more than that will also get a tuition discount on a sliding scale.

      • Private colleges are also part of the program, but it does not zero-out tuition for those institutions.

      • The bills also create a “Bridge Grant” program where eligible students will get a $500 annual stipend to help cover expenses beyond tuition, like books, lab fees, supplies, technology, transportation, housing, and childcare.

  • Senate Bill 5308 and House Bill 1557 – Establishing the Washington guaranteed admissions program and requiring student notifications

    • Status – 🙂 (Level 1)

    • The senate bill was heard on Jan. 23. The house bill will be heard on Feb. 5

    • What these bills do:

      • These companion bills will require public 4-year universities and tribal colleges to participate in the Washington Guaranteed Admissions Program. This program provides early notice to high school students with a minimum GPA of 3.0 of guaranteed admissions to public four-year universities in the state. At least one campus of every public four-year school participates in the program. Only UW Seattle and UW Bothell are not part of the program.

      • The idea with this bill is to formalize this laudatory program in state statute, and to promote universal participation in the program among K-12 school districts.

A lot of basic education funding balls in the air

In our recap of our first week of the legislative session we introduced the homepage for K-12 finance policy this session as what’s being referred to as the “Big Three:”

  1. Materials, supplies and operating costs, also known as MSOC

  2. Transportation

  3. Special education

These aren’t the flashiest topics, but there’s broad consensus that these basic education funding areas need to be topped up at the state level because our constitution is clear that the state, not local districts, is responsible for basic education funding like this.

At the end of week 3 of the legislative session there were three bills, one for each of the Big Three issues, that received unanimous votes in their favor from the Senate K-12 Education Committee. These bills will now move to Level 2, the Senate Budget Ways and Means Committee. 

K-12 funding legislation in the House is also moving, but in that chamber the House Education Committee took a pass on considering these bills as policy. Instead House K-12 funding bills got to skip Level 1 and move right on to Level 2, the House Appropriations Committee. 

Updates on the relevant bills are below: (😁 = Very good shape; 🙂 = good shape; 😬 = dicey; 😵 = dead; 🤔 = I have no idea).

Materials, supplies and operating costs

  • Senate Bill 5192 and House Bill 1338 – Concerning school operating costs

    • Status – 🙂 (Level 2)

    • SB 5192 was voted out of the policy committee on Jan. 30, and now needs a hearing date in the senate budget committee. HB 1338 will have a hearing in the house budget committee on Feb. 3.

    • What these bills do:

      • Increases the funding formula for materials, supplies, and operating costs.

Transportation

  • Senate Bill 5187 and House Bill 1579 – Providing adequate and predictable student transportation

    • Status – 🙂 (Level 2)

    • SB 5187 passed the policy committee on Jan. 30, and now needs a budget committee hearing. There is now a house companion in HB 1579, and it is also awaiting a hearing date in the budget committee.

    • What this bill does:

      • Provides additional funding for transportation for students who are homeless, and requires an analysis of overall school district transportation costs and the development of a new model.

Special Education

  • Senate Bill 5263 – Concerning special education funding

    • Status – 🙂 (Level 2)

    • SB 5263 might be the preferred vehicle for special education funding. This bill was voted out of its policy committee on Jan. 30, and now needs a hearing date in the budget committee. 

    • What this bill does:

      • Removes the 16% student enrollment cap for special education funding, and boosts the funded amount for each student. Does not include the extra funding boost for special education students who spend more time in a general education classroom.

  • House Bill 1267 – Adjusting funded special education enrollment

    • Status – 🤔 (Level 2)

    • HB 1267 was heard in the house budget committee on Jan. 30. It has not been scheduled for a vote.

    • What this bill does:

      • Removes the 16% special education student enrollment cap, and mandates oversight to prevent overidentification of special education students.

  • House Bill 1357 – Special education funding and support for inclusionary practices

    • Status – 🤔 (Level 2)

    • HB 1357 was also heard in the house budget committee on Jan. 30. It has not been scheduled for a vote. We’ll want to watch to see which bill between 1267 and 1357 gets a vote, as a signal to the preferred approach on the house side.

    • What this bill does:

      • Increases the funding formula for special education students, but does not remove the 16% cap.

  • Senate Bill 5307 and House Bill 1310 – Concerning special education funding

    • Status – 😬 (Level 1.5)

    • SB 5307 was heard on Jan. 22, but has not been scheduled for a vote. A signal that this is not the way the Senate wants to go. HB 1310 had a hearing in the budget committee on Jan. 30.

    • What these bill do:

      • These are identical companion bills that remove the 16% student enrollment cap for special education funding, and boost the funded amount for each student. They also offer an extra funding boost for special education students who spend more time in a general education classroom.

The best shot at K-12 funding equity this session

I recommend this explanatory piece at the Washington Observer on the Learning Assistance Program, and Senate Bill 5120

As that article explains well, we fund our schools in Washington based on a formula that sends more money to districts that on average serve a wealthier population. The two big drivers of that regressivity are regionalization, which provides more money to districts where the cost of living is higher; and local levies, which tend to be hard to pass in poorer areas. The Observer has a great twopart series that gets into the weeds of all of this. 

Our stance at FFTS is that state funding for K-12 education should be allocated to provide greater funding levels to school districts and schools that serve higher shares of students from low-income households. And that’s precisely what the Learning Assistance Program does. It provides funding based on student academic needs and concentrations of poverty, and in this way it’s a standout among K-12 funding streams.

Senate Bill 5120 pluses up the Learning Assistance Program in two ways:

  1. It creates a new tiered structure for allocating funds.

    • The current program provides a funding boost to schools where 50% or more of the student body is low-income. Any school above that threshold, no matter how high the percentage of low-income students, gets the same amount. Any school below that threshold is not eligible for Learning Assistance funding. 

    • The tiered structure in the bill provides Learning Assistance funding on a sliding scale for any school that has more than 30% of their student population qualifying as low-income.

  2. It dramatically boosts the funding allocation for the highest poverty schools.

    • Schools where 70% or more of the student population qualifies as low-income will get a much bigger boost in learning assistance funding.

Enhancing the Learning Assistance Program was made all the more urgent by the release of results from the Nation’s Report Card last week that showed persistent and worsening academic outcomes among low-income students in Washington. 

The results were especially bad in math, and as state Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in a press release:

“All the data compels us to take a much deeper examination of our approach to math in late elementary and middle school. For Washington state to maintain our economic excellence in software, engineering, advanced manufacturing, and other sectors, we have to make significant gains in elementary and middle school math in order to set up our students for maximum success in high school and beyond!”

Given all the energy around K-12 education funding this session, and the specific need to bring more equity to the funding structure, Senate Bill 5120 really should be a top priority for lawmakers. FFTS testified in support of the bill at its hearing on Jan. 23, and the question now is if the bill will move on to Level 2 and the Ways and Means Committee.

Bipartisan alignment to address student absenteeism

One last issue to highlight this week is chronic absenteeism, and Senate Bill 5007.

Rates of chronic absenteeism spiked following the pandemic and remain high, with more than 30% of all Washington students now chronically absent, compared to less than 10% before the onset of COVID-19. Regular attendance is essential for students to access in-class learning, build relationships with peers and adults, and benefit from the full range of school support.

Senate Bill 5007 has seven Democrats and seven Republicans signed-on, and proposes to tackle this issue by requiring educational service districts to offer training and coaching for staff to address excessive absenteeism. The bill also adds chronic absenteeism as a new focus area to an existing program administered by OSPI called Building Bridges, which provides grants to schools, CBOs, and colleges to implement student reengagement programs. 

The strategies in the bill are based off of a promising program that was funded through federal COVID relief dollars, and that included work in Tacoma Public Schools. While rates of chronic absenteeism remain above their pre-pandemic levels in Tacoma, they have improved and are at their lowest point since the 2020-21 school year.

What’s proposed in this bill is evidence-based and focused on students with the greatest needs. That’s a policy combination we love to see. 

Seeing through the fog in DC

Analyzing federal policy is not something we really have the capacity to-do at FFTS, especially with all the rapid fire news and the challenge to understand the implications and legality of things. But what we can do is focus on what we know about the actual authority of the federal government over education, and the stated education priorities of national Republicans.

The key thing to understand is that states set most education policies, and the federal role is to manage some important funding and regulations. On the funding side, the federal government provides on average 14% of the funding for K-12 education, and then manages the federal student loan system, and Pell grants for low-income students. The federal government’s regulatory mandate is to enforce protections related to gender, civil rights, and special education. And then lastly, the federal government sets the minimum standards for state accountability systems, testing, and publishes all sorts of education data.

To the extent any of those roles are defunded or not acted on, it will mean that we’ll see more and more divergence among individual states in terms of how well they fund education, enforce protections, and hold themselves accountable. Things could look very different from place to place. 

Broadly speaking, the education priorities for Republicans seem to fall into the following areas, that are mix of stepping back and being more absent, or being more assertive:

  • Cut federal funding

    • Former President Biden’s student loan policies will definitely be reversed, and there could be cuts to federal financial aid and other student assistance programs. The various K-12 funding streams for low-income schools, school meals, teacher training, special education, and others could be cut as part of a larger package to facilitate regressive tax cuts. 

    1.  
  • Incentivize school choice

    • Education savings accounts (ESAs), or what used to be called vouchers, is a policy idea where parents are given cash that they can use for their child’s education. It’s a longstanding conservative priority that’s having a new moment. The federal government can’t require states to create ESA programs, but they can incentivize ESAs with tax credits.

    1.  
  • Expand career pathways

    • This is probably the only opportunity for bipartisan education legislation. There could be agreement on a bill or bills to invest in career and technical education, apprenticeships, and other kinds of workforce development.

    1.  
  • Fight the culture war

    • More depressingly, there’s going to be a focus on rolling back various protections and anti-discrimination efforts. It seems that everything is getting lumped under “DEI,” but the substance seems to be things like rolling back Title IX protections for transgender students, reducing civil rights enforcement overall, doing things with executive orders that have chilling effects, and using congressional hearings to yell at administrators and bureaucrats. 

For players like us, and people in and around government at the state and local level, we’ll need to think about the extent to which we can fill the gap when the federal government is more absent and spending less money. We can also strategically think about pushing back. But doing that effectively requires harnessing energy across the country. And that won’t come out of thin air. It will have to start in dozens and dozens of localities, and to the extent FFTS contributes to that, our focus will be on how well we’re spending money, how well the most marginalized students were doing, and how well our education system is set-up to put people on a path to a good-earning wage job.