Being a parent is nonstop hard work, which makes following all the news happening in city, state, and U.S. decision-making circles challenging.
Here are highlights of Washington political news from last week (April 6-13) and a hint at what’s up this week.
The Seattle School Board really needs to hear from you.
The wheels of change in Seattle Public Schools (SPS) started rolling last month when Superintendent Brent Jones announced he’d step down in September.
The Seattle School Board immediately began its search for a firm to guide the search process for the district’s next leader.
Then on Friday, the board invited SPS parents to attend a special “engagement session.”
Seattle School Board President Gina Topp stressed the importance of parents and community input in a March meeting of the board.
“Hiring the superintendent is a significant body of work,” Topp said.
“We will need a robust engagement process with our community to hear insights from them about what the board should be looking for in our next superintendent.
We will also need an effective recruitment of the best candidates, diligent vetting, and knowledgeable counsel throughout the process.”
If you have ideas and thoughts on what SPS needs in a new Superintendent, head to Aki Kurose Middle School library on April 24 at 5:30.
Jones also sent a message to parents last week, reiterating his commitment to leaving the district with a balanced 2025-26 budget, although he admitted it “will not eliminate our current deficit.”
Given Washington’s painful state budget deficit and the Trump administration’s attacks on school funding, this should be no surprise.
Members of All Together for Seattle Schools, the advocacy group that sprang into action to stop school closures and push for more state funding for schools, say they plan to be at the April 24 meeting—and they plan to attend the School Board Meeting April 23 to demand the district end its practice of waitlisting some students’ enrollment.
In a statement sent out earlier this month, the group wrote: “We urge Seattle Public Schools to end its mismanagement of student enrollment, put a stop to deliberate actions that prevent families from enrolling, and begin working with the public to develop a new, holistic, equitable student assignment plan that welcomes students to all of our schools.”
One plus for families in the midst of current changes?
Although school closures amid a financial crisis are always possible, Jones’ pending departure and other major changes at SPS make it unlikely the district will broach the idea soon.
According to The Seattle Times, Board President Topp says there are “no plans to revive the [closure] conversation.
However, nothing is ever off the table completely.”
Move needed gun control bills forward now.
There are a whole lot of things lawmakers could do to reduce the possibility of gun deaths and injuries in Washington—and the entire U.S.
Banning guns would do the trick.
But short of that, and given the gun lobby’s strength and pull in this country, restricting guns from public places and strengthening the permit process to purchase a firearm are musts.
Unfortunately, the Senate bill to restrict the possession of weapons in state or local public buildings, parks or playground facilities where children are likely to be present, and county fairs and county fair facilities is still waiting for a full House vote.
And the House bill that has passed out of the House and out of its Senate committee with ample support still hasn’t been brought to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Time is running out.
The current session ends April 27.
“These are common sense, evidence-based bills.
They should be a priority,” Mike McIntyre, Government Affairs Director at the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, said in an email.
Now is the time to contact your lawmakers and demand that these two life-saving measures — HB 1163 (permit to purchase) and SB 5098 (no guns in sensitive places)— be brought to House and Senate floors for a vote.
A loss in the fight for inclusivity.
Last Tuesday’s latest deadline in the Washington Legislature was a death knell for a handful of bill proposals that would have significantly impacted the lives of children and their families.
One of the ones I am certainly sad to see go down with the deadline is Senate Bill 5123, the proposal by Democratic lawmakers to protect more students from discrimination in Washington’s public schools.
The measure would have added protections for neurodivergence, immigration status, ethnicity, and homelessness and defended new classes against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender expression, and gender identity.
At a time when executive orders from the White House are targeting many of the groups the bill sought to protect, I hope lawmakers will put this bill at the top of their list when they convene in 2026.
This comment should make you sick.
Speaking of discrimination: Every family and community in America should be shocked and angered by the words flowing out of the mouth of Todd Lyons, the nation’s acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director.
In a speech before the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix last week, Lyons said he wants to see ICE truck squads rolling through cities and towns, picking up immigrants for deportation.
“We need to get better at treating this like a business, like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings,” he said.
Humans are not packages.
Undocumented residents have the same rights to due process as American Citizens born and raised here.
To want to see human beings regularly disappeared into a friendly-looking patrolling our streets is, to put a fine point on it, sick.
My heart goes out to the thousands of families in Washington who live in fear of such rhetoric becoming fact.
Check out the Washington State Standard’s story.
The attack on art and culture hits Washington state.
Attacking the Smithsonian was not enough.
Last week, organizations supporting arts and culture throughout Washington learned that more than $10 million in funding they or Washington State expected to receive through the National Endowment for the Humanities has been canceled or cut.
Congress approved the funds.
It’s one more bullet from the gun that President Donald Trump has been pointing at humanities and cultural perspectives he disagrees with.
According to a report by Cascade PBS, organizations throughout Washington received letters from the federal agency last Wednesday stating, “Your grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination.
… Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities.”
Our children need and deserve the programs these funds were promised to support, including children’s reading programs in libraries and schools, Washington cultural history programs and speaker series, humanities fellowships, and our state’s poet laureate program.
Parents who believe children must better understand others in their communities should be outraged at this cut.
The humanities are a critical bridge for understanding the wide range of people, cultures, perspectives in each of our communities in Washington.
As Julie Ziegler, executive director of Humanities Washington, said in a news release last week: “The attack on the NEH is an attack on community-minded people.
image source from：https://www.seattleschild.com/on-politics-news-that-impacts-washington-families-4/
