OLYMPIA — Lawmakers sound ready and willing to lift some of the burdensome rules the state imposes on public schools but provides no money to carry out.
The trick will be figuring out which mandates can go and which ones must stay.
Thursday, three bills repealing or suspending dozens of requirements — P.E. classes, AIDS education, training on sexual harassment policies — got a hearing in the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education committee.
By its conclusion, the bill authors, Sens. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell; Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens; and Joe McDermott, D-Seattle, said some targeted mandates will stay — like physical education.
But they insisted they don’t want this year’s attempt to wind up like those of past years, a failure.
They’re hoping this time, with the districts and state suffering huge budget challenges, the mindset of those in education interest groups will be different.
“The biggest complaint you guys say all the time is unfunded mandates, unfunded mandates, unfunded mandates,” Hobbs said to those attending the hearing. “Let’s try to move it this year. Let’s not just talk about it.
“If we don’t do it, I don’t want to hear about unfunded mandates,” he said.
Deregulating public schools is an almost annual topic of conversation in the Legislature with principals, superintendents, parents and teachers urging lawmakers to stop imposing new rules without providing money to pay for them.
The growing number of unfunded mandates is draining school district budgets of already scarce dollars, they say.
In past years, when legislators attempted to erase any requirement, they encountered fierce resistance from backers of every rule they targeted. So they wound up doing nothing.
What’s different this time is lawmakers collected specific suggestions from the major education interest groups and put them directly into the legislation.
“This comes from school districts. It is not our list. It is not my list,” said McAuliffe, chairwoman of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee as she launched into the hearing on the bills.
McDermott said Thursday marked the “beginning of the conversation” and not everything in the original bills will be in the final version.
Nonetheless, he said, “Let’s not make it a futile effort.”
For example, the original bills call for eliminating requirements for physical education classes and a ban on junk food and sodas on campus. Those mandates will stay, lawmakers said.
Transfer rules for children of school employees, adoption of safe school plans and development of policies to serve children with disabilities and illnesses such as diabetes won’t be wiped out as proposed in the original bill.
Plenty of potential cuts remain for lawmakers and interest groups to debate.
Thirteen people spoke at Thursday’s hearing, some expressing more willingness to cooperate than others.
“We signed in pro and we mean it,” said Barbara Mertens, assistant executive director of the Washington Association of School Administrators.
She provided the committee with six pages of mandates the association suggested be cut in 2003. Nothing happened and since then the state added about 230 new rules, she said.
Don Steele of the state School Directors Association said the group wants to see change. But if no mandates go away, he said he hoped lawmakers would not add new measures costing time and money to implement.
Lucinda Young of the Washington Education Association, the statewide teachers union, pledged support for removing rules for preparing and updating various student learning plans.
Axing vision and hearing tests as suggested in the bills is something they are not backing, she said.
Hobbs said he’s open to modifying the bills but not dropping them.
“We do know and understand we have to have some mandates,” he said. “We are listening. I also want to let you know we are not afraid.”
Report Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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