East Valley is the only school district in Yakima County with a student representative on its board -- and one of just 20 among Washington's 296 school boards, according to the Washington State School Directors Association (WSSDA).
In the last legislative session, Washington State passed Senate Bill 5436 which mandates that the Washington State School Directors Association draft a sample policy addressing access to nutritious foods, opportunities for developmentally appropriate exercise, and accurate information related to these topics by January 2005.
Butler-Wall said the Washington State School Directors Association recommended against inserting performance benchmarks into a contract and advised her that it would be better to negotiate goals and objectives separately.
Government is all related, whether it's the Department of Transportation or DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services) or schools or whatever," said Steve Nielsen, executive director of the Washington State School Directors Association.
Representatives from the Washington Association of School Administrators, Washington State School Directors Association and the state Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) all spoke against the class-size bill because "they said they knew the urgency was to settle the issue of teacher salaries," according to McAuliffe.
In 1985, the state's most powerful education lobbies fought legislation legalizing home-schooling; today, even the influential Washington State School Directors Association offers seminars to educators on how to build cooperative partnerships with home-schoolers.
Dwayne Slate, associate executive director of the Washington State School Directors Association, thinks half of the $823 million should go to an education endowment fund that could pay for the rewards and sanctions that are part of the new state accountability system.
I can't quite believe that the Legislature is going to make major changes in half the state's budget (the portion that goes for K-12 education) without putting a whole lot of provisos in there about how it would be spent and to ensure that it won't automatically grow without their approval," said Dwayne Slate, lobbyist for the Washington State School Directors Association.
