-
Education Agenda for 2010
I just posted a bunch of entries on my blog (www.rosshunter.info) that are part of what needs to happen this year on the K-12 front. I broke it up so that the items would be readable, unlike my multi-page newsletters… 2010 will be a pivotal one for education in Washington at all levels. There are…
-
Local School Levies
School districts are allowed to raise local levies to fund things that are not “basic education.” The state limits the amount they can raise to a percentage of the total they receive in state and federal funding. This is so that districts like Bellevue don’t raise twice as much as districts like Yakima. The standard…
-
Race To The Top Funding
The Obama administration under Education Secretary Arne Duncan has made $4.35 billion available to districts that demonstrate they are making progress in four areas: Standards and Assessments Data Systems to Support Instruction Great Teachers and Leaders Turning Around Struggling Schools We have real work to do in order to have even a remote chance of…
-
Education Funding in 2010
This will be a difficult year for short-term funding of education in Washington, and in almost all of the other states. In 2009 we cut everything that moved in the budget, but made the smallest cuts in the K-12 budget. I expect this to be true in 2010 as well, and will work hard to…
-
Education Standards
As all of you who have children know, they will often live up to what you expect of them, as long as they believe the expectations are reasonable. My consistent belief is that we should expect all of our students to graduate from high school ready to succeed in whatever it is they want to…
-
Budget Stalemate in Albany Puts Strain on New York State – NYTimes.com
It’s worth reading this article in today’s NY Times about how dysfunctional the NY legislature is in dealing with their budget problem. We will have a significant problem this year and I hope we won’t display the same inability to work together to resolve the problem. Budget Stalemate in Albany Puts Strain on New York…
-
Incremental Progress on the SR-520 Bridge
Last year the legislature passed a bill (HB2211) that authorized tolling on 520 starting in 2010. I voted against this for a variety of reasons, but mostly because the bill limited the potential uses of the tolling revenue to only the floating part of the bridge, leaving the eastside approaches waiting. We’re ready to go…
-
Sound Transit East Link public workshop in downtown Bellevue
Sound Transit included the following blurb in the weekly easatside tranpsortation news WSDOT sends out. These are typically useful events with lots of charts, maps, and staff around to answer questions. It’s probably worth going by for 15 minutes to look at what the options are if you’re interested in Link Light Rail on the Eastside.…
-
Another Bizarre Supreme Court Decision
Today the WA State Supreme Court issued a decision in the Federal Way school district case. Federal Way sued the state complaining that our distribution of funds did not meet the constitution’s requirement for a “general and uniform” way of funding schools. In specific, the district complained that since allocations to school districts for teacher…
-
Light Rail over 520?
A couple of people have suggested quite publicly that we reconsider the decision to put light rail on the I-90 bridge. I sent this as an email reply to Dave Thomas, who publishes a reliably interesting newsletter (http://pugetsoundliberals.org/) in response to an article in the most recent edition (#198.) 520 doesn’t work as the initial…