Rep. Skyler Rude’s public education review bill passes Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education after unanimous approval in the House
CONTACT: Austin Choate, Legislative Assistant Supervisor | 360-786-7666
Rep. Skyler Rude’s public education review bill passes Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education after unanimous approval in the House
Today, the Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education approved legislation by Rep. Skyler Rude, R-Walla Walla, after the Washington State House of Representatives passed it unanimously last week. House Bill 2636, which creates a permanent review process to identify ineffective K-12 policies and regulations, was voted unanimously off the House floor.
“I consistently hear from districts about mandates, every single year. And the Legislature, unfortunately, adds on, and adds on, and adds on,” Rude said when testifying on the bill. “We don’t necessarily do a look-back to evaluate how effective the policies are that we’re passing out of the legislature.”
The Public Education Review Steering Committee’s purpose would be to recommend whether to retain, modify or repeal the programs based on cost-benefit, efficacy, student performance and other factors. The bill directs the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee to conduct the reviews and report to the Legislature.
“Creating a process to evaluate and remove unnecessary, unfunded mandates not only would benefit school districts and their students,” said Rude. “It would lead to more efficient use of taxpayer dollars and improve student outcomes.”
Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle, showed bipartisan support at the bill’s Senate public hearing, stating: “Fifty percent of our budget should be, approximately, going to our paramount duty – education. We’re doing performance audits of state agencies in everything except that fifty percent. We should be doing performance audits in education.”
The bill now heads to the Senate Committee on Ways and Means for further consideration.
