Student Board members cast official votes for the first time in the SBE’s 145-year history as the Board passed a resolution honoring student voice. The meeting was July 13-14 (in Spokane and on Zoom). The Board also swore-in student representative Donalda Brantley and held a panel featuring former student members.

During the first day of the July meeting, the State Board of Education honored past, present, and future student Board members by passing a resolution honoring student voice. The resolution comes after last session when the legislature passed SSB 5497, giving student members voting rights on the Board. Just before the resolution passed with full Board support, past members Autymn Wilde (now at Gonzaga), Joe Hofman (now at Georgetown), and Baxter Hershman (now living in Spain working with linguistics, soon to start technology career), joined the meeting and gave advice to current students.

In our state, there are both required and encouraged educational offerings at each school district. The law tells us that districts must provide an educational program that allows students to meet graduation requirements.

SBE held its latest Board meeting March 9-10, and discussed private schools rules, graduation data, emergency waivers, graduation requirements alignment, legislative session, and more. Find documents from the meeting and links to TVW’s live stream on SBE’s meeting page.

On March 1, the Washington State House of Representatives debated the bill that would give student members voting rights on the Board. The bill passed with 60 yeas and 38 nays.

SBE is excited to offer funding and support to eighteen schools across our state. These awards support mastery-based learning (MBL) - sometimes called competency-based education. SBE invited schools to apply to be part of the state’s new Mastery-based Learning Collaborative (MBLC). Schools were selected through a competitive process with the goal of fully implementing this learning model over the course of a few years.

This past week, students from different high schools in Washington

SBE held its latest Board meeting December 2, and discussed ethnic studies, private school rules, legislative updates, and more.