Release Date:
The Washington State Board of Education adopted its 2026 legislative platform during a meeting on October 16, 2025, in Tukwila WA.
For the 2026 session, the Board’s legislative platform recognizes the significant fiscal challenges facing the state. While acknowledging these pressures, the platform reaffirms the state’s constitutional duty to amply fund public education and ensure that every child has access to a high-quality, equitable education. The platform will focus on safeguarding recent progress while identifying opportunities to restore or strengthen critical investments, aligning with the Board’s mission to advance an equitable and inclusive education system that prepares every student to thrive in a changing world.
The platform calls for preventing K–12 funding cuts that disproportionately affect underserved students, upholding civil rights protections and inclusive curricula, and maintaining support for student mental health and well-being.
The platform also emphasizes restoring critical resources. It supports OSPI’s request to fund the legislative mandate for districts to move to a universal online platform for the High School and Beyond Plan, a graduation requirement for students. The platform also calls for reinstating funding for Treehouse’s Graduation Success Program, which helps students in foster care stay on track to graduation.
In addition to restoring funding, the platform also asks lawmakers to support FutureReady, the Board's comprehensive review of graduation requirements, by not adding new graduation requirements separately from the review process. Instead, the platform asks lawmakers to support the Board’s comprehensive and strategic approach which is slated for a legislative proposal during the 2027 session. This will allow for a balanced and integrated graduation requirement framework that prepares students holistically.
Please direct all media inquires to:
Colton Kaltenfeldt
Communications Manager