WASA Legislative Priorities

School administrators will focus their advocacy efforts in the 2026 Legislative Session on the full funding of basic education— specifically Materials, Supplies, and Operating Costs (MSOC), Special Education, and Pupil Transportation.
As school districts face increasing financial difficulties, however, school administrators have ongoing concerns about the state’s K–12 funding structure that must be addressed. These issues must continue to remain on legislators’ radar:

Fully Fund Substitute Costs
WASA urges the Legislature to fully fund the costs associated with required staff leave. Current law requires school districts to provide a minimum of ten days of leave for both classified and certificated staff. However, the state only provides funding for certificated teacher substitutes for 4 days per basic education-funded teacher FTE at a rate of $151.86 per day, which equates to approximately $16 per hour; no funding is provided for classified substitutes. This leaves a significant gap in covering the actual cost of substitutes, forcing districts to use local levy funds or other resources to meet this shortfall. In addition, school districts are also required to provide sick leave to substitutes under state law, further increasing the financial burden on districts without additional funding from the state.

Update Staff Allocations
WASA urges the Legislature to continue to provide for more realistic staffing ratios in the Prototypical School Funding Model (PSFM). The Prototypical School Funding Model is a core, fundamental part of the education funding structure. The funding ratios for most staff positions, however, have remained the same since the Model was first implemented in 2010, resulting in outdated and unrealistic state-funded staffing levels. The first priority must be the completion of implementation of Phase I of the recommendations from the Staffing Enrichment Workgroup (2019): improving staffing allocations for critically needed school principals; providing additional professional development to close achievement gaps; and adding continuous improvement coaches as an enhancement to the PSFM.

Modify Regionalization/Experience Factor
WASA urges the Legislature to immediately revamp the methodology of regionalization and experience factors to ensure school districts receive more consistent and equitable resources. The current regionalization methodology of using housing costs is flawed and the implementation of experience factors is unsound. The current calculation of these factors has exacerbated inequities between districts and must be updated swiftly.

Reform Levy/Local Effort Assistance
Inequities between districts were exacerbated by capping levy authority of property rich districts at a higher level than neighboring property poor districts—while diminishing levy capacity for all districts at the same time. Spiking housing values are negatively impacting many districts’ efforts to adopt levies and are causing many districts eligible for Local Effort Assistance (LEA) to lose funding—or lose eligibility all together.

Support Capital Facilities
WASA urges the Legislature to provide robust and reliable funding for school facilities, including funding for school districts that have difficulty passing local bonds or have limited debt capacity to support necessary new construction or modernization. The Legislature must enhance the state’s investment in K–12 construction by updating the antiquated, pre–1980 funding formulas to ensure funding more closely reflects actual construction costs and educational space needs. Additionally, the Legislature must finally give Washington’s citizens the opportunity to decide whether school district bond issues should be approved with a simple majority vote.