If you miss Arun Raha already, don’t worry: He gives an economic outlook in today’s show. Also: We’ve got details on the education reform package and one of the programs that replaced Disability Lifeline.
Tags: Disability Lifeline, economic outlook, education reform
“We’re here because we believe that education is truly the answer,” said Rep. Eric Pettigrew, kicking off the education reform press conference where he and a handful of other lawmakers are unveiling their ideas for the session. He said 11 students per hour drop out in this state, and many fourth graders aren’t reading or doing math at grade level. He said the coalition of lawmakers is proposing a group of bills that would aim to help those struggling students now.
Pettigrew said he knows education reform is an emotional subject, but when it’s done with the right reasons, “it’s well worth the fight … All we’re asking for is an honest, open dialogue.”
Sen. Steve Litzow took the mic. “We know that our schools are not keeping pace with the needs of a dynamic and growing international marketplace,” he said. “There are 920 schools that are designated Title I” — that’s 40 percent of Washington schools where students aren’t meeting adequately yearly progress.
Litzow said the single most important factor in a child’s education is a quality teacher. “We need to do everything that we can do to make sure that everyone … has the opportunity to succeed.” He said that includes a more robust method to evaluate teachers that can help develop quality teachers — and weed out those for whom teaching might not be a good fit. (more…)
Tags: school reform
TVW launched a new service today to help you track the bills and issues you care about: Scout.
Scout is a free service that allows you to decide what you want to track, from gay marriage to levy equalization to the budget. Type the search into your account, then Scout will let you know whenever there’s new content on the subject. It’s not just limited to TVW video and webcasts — Scout also looks at legislative documents like bills and bill reports. And it allows you to share videos and content with others and keep them in the loop, too.
For more information on Scout, go here. Or register for a free account and get started right away here.
Gov. Chris Gregoire, unveiling her education reforms, said the current evaluation system for teachers and principals isn’t working. She’s proposing a new, four-tiered plan where low-performing teachers and principals can be fired if they don’t improve over a set period of time.
She said as with any profession, sometimes teachers or principals “just aren’t cut out” for teaching, and the state should work harder to weed out the field. “We owe it to our kids,” she said. She said modest funding would need to accompany this plan so that schools could be trained on how to effectively implement the new evaluation system.
Another reform idea: Take six lowest-performing schools and turn them into “lab schools.” Each low-performing school will partner with an area college of education, responsible for turning around the schools.
She’s also proposing an “Office of Student Achievement,” a cabinet-level office to be created in July 2012. “The office will focus on students in high school through graduate school,” and focus on raising the level of learning.
“These are reforms with real outcomes,” she said. “These reforms will help our kids and our businesses in the years ahead,” she said. And when the recession is over, Washington students will be prepared for the job market.
To read the governor’s press release on the proposals, click through to the jump. (more…)
This week’s Q&A is with Sen. Joe Zarelli. I spoke with him about SJR 8206, a Constitutional Amendment that will bolster the Rainy Day Fund by requiring the state to put “extraordinary revenue growth” in the bank.
Q: First, tell me what this would do in your own words.
Zarelli: Well, it builds upon what we put out a couple of years back establishing the Rainy Day Fund. For me, it’s one of those long-term lessons learned from the current revenue scenario we’re in, where we saw revenue grow way outside a typical scenario (earlier in the decade). What this does is this sets up a process in the future where if this ever happens again, we’d be required to capture a percent of extraordinary revenues and move it to the Rainy Day Fund. That does two things: First, it makes us save some of that money and second, we don’t spend it — so it has a double effect of making the budget more sustainable over time.
Q: You mentioned that it saves money in two ways — the second being that you don’t create new programs with extraordinary revenue. Can you say more about that?
Zarelli: Well, the biggest problem is that when you have a spike in revenue that you know isn’t going to continue and then you spend that spike, it creates a bow wave — you have no way to support that spending. When revenue comes back down to its historical growth pattern and then spending is way out of balance, that creates problems like we’re in now. The idea is to harmonize the spending pattern so it stays consistent with what is long-term growth instead of the ebbs and flows.
Q: There hasn’t been much opposition to this Constitutional amendment. Does that reflect bipartisan support across the state?
Zarelli: Well, there are some of those in the social services arena who think that we can’t commit to saving money, we have to spend it because there’s a huge need. There is a small group, but my message to them is that it does us no good if we commit to spending that we then have to withdraw from. (more…)
Tags: Budget, budget stabilization, Q&A, Rainy Day Fund, revenue, SJR 8206, taxes, Zarelli
Last week, I spoke to Tim Eyman about his latest initiative and how it would affect tolling across the state. This week, I spoke with Doug MacDonald, former secretary of transportation. He retired in 2007, just after the Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened. He’s an opponent of the initiative. Here’s what he had to say.
Q: First, what does this initiative do from your perspective?
MacDonald: Well, the worst part of the initiative is that it’s going to stop a whole lot of progress that’s been made on roadway improvements. I’m not sure that Tim Eyman, when he drafted this initiative, understood what some of its effects would be. But the kind of bomb that it dropped that’s most significant is on the 520 bridge project, because that’s structured to be financed by tolls to pay back bonds that would pay for some of its cost. That’s a good thing because it means that costs get paid in part by the users and not fall on taxpayers across the state. That’s a plan that’s been very attractive.
But the initiative says that tolls have to be set by the Legislature, which is absolutely not consistent with tolls being used to pay back that kind of a bond. And the confirmation of that isn’t coming from people like me, it’s coming from our state treasurer, Jim McIntire. McIntire has analyzed all this and he has put out a statement, reflected in the OFM fiscal analysis, that says that investors won’t buy bonds at as favorable a rate if there’s the political uncertainty of having tolls being set by the Legislature. (more…)
Tags: Doug MacDonald, funding, initiative 1125, Q&A, taxes, Tim Eyman, tolls, transportation
Nora Gibson, in a photo from her website.
For this week’s Q&A, I spoke with Nora Gibson, executive director of Full Life Care, a nonprofit that provides home care services, operate small boarding homes and has five adult day health centers across King and Snohomish Counties. She estimates her nonprofit serves approximately 1,600 people.
Gibson is in favor of Initiative 1163, which would restore a training requirement for home healthcare workers.
Q: First, what does this initiative do from your perspective?
Gibson: This initiative is really an attempt to restore the components of initiative 1029 that was really focused on training and improving the quality of the long term care workforce. That initiative passed overwhelmingly in 2008 but over the last several budget years has been systematically dismantled. So 1163 attempts to go back to the people to talk about the importance of a high-quality workforce in what I will call community based long-term care. Again, trying to make sure that people get background checks , set a minimum basic training standard that would be equivalent to what you get working inside a nursing home, and lots of kind of accountability measures built into this particular initiative.
The bottom line is something I’ve observed since the 1980s, is most long term care is now provided outside of institutional settings – in adult family homes, boarding homes, and by home care workers all across the state. And they receive only a minimum amount of training – I think right now it’s 32 hours. And that’s it.
You can hire independently on your own a homecare worker and they can have a certification but the only training they’ve received is this 32 hours. (more…)
Tags: elections, home healthcare, Initiatie 1163, SEIU
TVW covered this morning’s WA Dept of Corrections press conference unveiling its report on the January slaying of Officer Jayme Biendl at the Monroe Correctional Complex. Here’s the full video, including Q&A.
And here’s a link to the Dept of Corrections report. The names of corrections officers involved have been blacked out.
Tags: DOC report, DOC shooting, Jayme Biendl
Today’s Q&A is with Sen. Mark Schoesler, a Republican from Ritzville. He’s a sponsor of the bipartisan pension reform bill that had it’s first hearing today in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Q: Let’s talk about the bill to reform the pension system. It had it’s first public hearing today – it’s a bipartisan bill. What are the most important changes in the bill?
Schoesler: The most important change is simply it guarantees that we will do a reasonably good job of funding our pensions. If it’s not a constitutional amendment, the next legislature in town could suspend it, amend it and it goes bye bye.
Q: But if voters don’t approve it, what happens with pension reform?
Schoesler: I think that the fact that if we go to the voters and tell them that fully funding our current law pension obligations is necessary and it’s bipartisan , I think the voters will agree with us. (If not) then we’re back on our own again. It doesn’t do it any good to put it in statute. Look at 601 — 601 is still on the books, but it doesn’t mean anything, and that’s how pensions are. If we don’t put it in the constitution — 601 created a Rainy Day Fund, and it actually worked at one point. But between citizen initiatives and creative legislators, there was none after a period of time. That’s why a constitutional amendment for the Rainy Day Fund was absolutely necessary. So, if we’re going to make a really good faith effort with pensions, we have to do the same.
Q: And this is a bipartisan bill – are there changes you would make if you were writing it on your own? (more…)
Tags: Agriculture, bipartisan, Budget, pensions, Schoesler
OK. After caucusing, the Senate is back. And they’re reconsidering the teacher pay raise bill.
Sen. Rodney Tom said he’s in support of the bill, although he voted against the amendment. He said teachers are the most valuable part of the classroom.
But Sen. Joe Zarelli said this bill only creates the promise of a lot more money in the future — and now’s not the time for that.
That was the only testimony.
The bill passed 28 to 20.
Tags: COLAs
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