WFIS Legislative Agenda 2018

There are 528 private schools in Washington State educating close to 83,000 students.  It would cost close to a billion dollars to educate these children in the public school system.  Private Schools take pride in being an important part of the educational system in Washington. We successfully help to educate the public, support communities, and graduate young adults who contribute positively to society.

There are two concerns our schools have that we believe the legislature could help us solve.

School Safety. 

Schools work hard to create safe environments for their students and be completely prepared for emergencies.  However, schools are only able to protect children if they know there is a crisis at hand.  Currently, there is no system for notifying private schools of a crisis.  There have been too many extremely dangerous situations where hundreds of children were on playgrounds during a shootout and a gunman on the loose.

We ask for your support of Senate Bill 6410 that requires private schools be notified of emergencies.

An increase in Working Connections Childcare Subsidy

There are over 225 childcare programs within private schools educating more than 2,000 young children. Many of our programs enroll families using the Working Connections Childcare Program.  However, the financial stress of taking children on extremely low subsidies is overburdening programs to the point where they are making the decision to either not take subsidized children or close their programs.

Our schools offer high quality programs and care about supporting the whole community. We ask that you increase the subsidy rate so we can help the state reach its goal of having 90% of children in the state “school ready.”

We support an increase in rates for the Working Connections Child Care Program with an investment of $32 million. Moving the rates closer to 75% of market value would stabilize the industry and allow providers to support low-income families. The state still benefits because our programs would pay for the 25% not covered by the state to educate children from low-income working families.

Let’s work together to support all children!

Thank you for your support.