Opinion: Proposed bill would cut funding to schools that do not adopt controversial state-imposed curriculum

Liv Finne of the Washington Policy Center believes one of the main reasons polls show a loss of faith in so many of our public institutions is the decline in the quality of public education and the trend of parents pulling their children out of the system.

Liv Finne believes one of the main reasons polls show a loss of faith in so many of our public institutions is the decline in the quality of public education and the trend of parents pulling their children out of the system

Liv Finne
Washington Policy Center

Yesterday Senator Lisa Wellman (D-Mercer Island), chair of the Senate Education Committee, led majority Democrats on her committee in passing ESHB 2331. The bill would give a statewide executive branch official, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, new authority to cut the funding of any school that he deems is not requiring Critical Race Theory (CRT), Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or Queer Theory (QT) lessons in the classroom.

Details on the bill and its potential impact on funding cuts is provided in our Legislative Memo analysis. The funding-reduction authority is presented in Section 1, Subsection 2 of the bill.

Republicans on the Committee sought to protect school children from exposure to hurtful ideologies in the classroom. Senator Jim McCune (R-Graham) proposed Amendment A, to prohibit school districts from approving instruction materials that are “lewd, obscene or pornographic.” The amendment sought to keep school materials age-appropriate for children, more like “G” or “PG” rather than, “R” and “NC-17.”

Senator McCune described some of harmful classroom materials that would be required under ESHB 2331, as reported on TVW at Time Stamp 1:43:29 (https://tvw.org/video/senate-early-learning-k-12-education-2024021313/?eventID=2024021313.)

Senator Wellman recommended a “No” vote and Amendment A was defeated. The committee majority then voted to pass the underlying bill and send it to the full Senate for passage.

Senator Wellman said the bill would not undermine a local school district’s control over its own classroom materials. This statement is not true. The bill would cancel local control over instructional materials and give veto power to the state superintendent. Anyone in doubt is invited to read the text of the bill (see ESHB 2331, Section 1, Subsection 2).

One of the main reasons polls show a loss of faith in so many of our public institutions is the decline in the quality of public education and the trend of parents pulling their children out of the system (Washington public schools have lost 46,000 families over the last few years).

Another reason is the increasingly common experience of hearing a public official say her proposed bill would do one thing, only to find on reading the bill that it would actually do the opposite.

Liv Finne is the director of the Center for Education at the Washington Policy Center.