Hopeful legislation . . .

With the reduction in K-4 staffing that we experienced this year and the certainty of it continuing in the next biennium, the introduction of HB 2078 by Representative Jinkins and others makes good sense. As I learned in this LEV post, the intent is to restore full funding of K-3 staffing. The language below is from the proposed legislation.


(1) The legislature finds that Washington's best opportunity for long-term success rests with the further development of our public educational system. The legislature further finds that smaller classes in the early grades can significantly increase the amount of learning that takes place in the classroom.

(2) It is the intent of the legislature to fully fund critical K-3 class size reductions by significantly narrowing a tax deduction for banks and other financial institutions, and repealing a sales tax exemption for nonresidents.

The blog post says that the tax deduction for banks was originally to support a failing Washington Mutual. With Chase purchasing Washington Mutual there are no state banks that this exemption supports. It makes sense to me to repeal these tax breaks to support staffing in K-3.

If it were that easy I am assuming that this would have been done already. There must be reasons that I don’t know about and that LEV chose not to share since they support the proposal. This is another piece of legislation that we need to let our legislators know is important to us. It works as we saw with the removal of the average day attendance from the proposed Senate budget.