Pollet, Farrell, Kagi, Ryu bill to help renovate, reopen schools to deal with enrollment growth dies in Senate on final Day

A bill to support school-construction introduced Feb. 26 in the state House of Representatives by Reps. Gerry Pollet, Jessyn Farrell, Ruth Kagi, Cindy Ryu and almost half of the members of the House of Representatives with the aim of relieving overcrowding in urban schools failed to pass the State Senate, which sent it back to the House Rules Committee March 13, the final day of the 2014 legislative session.

Pollet said at the bill’s introduction that the bill would help the state meet its obligation to provide lower class sizes.

The legislation authorizes the sale of $700 million in bonds to pay both for building new, full-day kindergarten classrooms and for reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade.

Pollet noted that Seattle Public Schools officials estimate that the district needs to build 346 new classrooms to meet a constitutional duty both to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade and to provide full-day kindergarten for every student.

Pollet said the new money for school-construction bonds "will help us meet our children’s constitutional rights to have an appropriate space to learn with lower class sizes.

“We have special-education and reading-needs children being taught in hallways and on stages in lunchrooms, during lunch. Schools where parents labored to build computer and science labs have had those labs torn out to make space to lighten the load on overcrowded classrooms. Further, we're simply out of any more space for portables or expansion at many of our existing school sites.

"So many Seattle schools are horribly overcrowded. This severe overcrowding nightmare in Seattle has been growing worse for many years because of biases against urban districts in the state's construction formula."

Pollet and Farrell are Democrats representing the 46th Legislative District, including Lake Forest Park, Kenmore and northeast Seattle. Kagi and Ryu are Democrats representing the 32nd District, including Shoreline, part of northwest Seattle, Woodway, south Edmonds, unincorporated areas of southwest Snohomish County near Edmonds and Woodway, Lynnwood and part of Mountlake Terrace.