The Washington state House Committee on Appropriations held a public hearing Wednesday, April 2, on a bill that would extend career and technical education (CTE) to sixth graders in the state of Washington.
Second Substitute Senate Bill 5358, which is sponsored by Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, was originally designed to fund exploratory CTE courses that are offered in middle schools. However, the funding portion was dropped from the bill during its stay in the Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education.
As it sits now, the substituted bill would allow middle schools to offer exploratory CTE classes to sixth graders, but it provides no additional funding for such courses. It goes so far as to exclude sixth graders from CTE enrollment counts so as to avoid allocating additional funding to CTE programs.
The legislation is a likely casualty of a difficult budget season.
The bill also makes a small change to the way that CTE programs are accounted for, requiring districts to treat high school and middle school CTE programs as one when reporting their minimum expenditures. But that tweak is stipulated as an accounting change only.
Public comment for the bill made clear that the substituted version without funding is disappointing to those who supported it.
Instead of support for expanded education, testimony instead showed concerns for sustaining CTE courses.
First to testify was Nate Bloch, a high school senior from the Bellevue School District who testified as “other” rather than in support or opposition.
“Given the current funding crisis many school districts across the state are facing, many may be forced to stop offering CTE courses to sixth graders,” Bloch said. “I’m worried that districts will start telling their incoming sixth graders, ‘no you can’t take theatre or photography or computer science.’”
A representative for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, which is responsible for managing the state's public school system, also testified at the hearing.
Bill 5358 was specifically requested by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI); however, the agency testified as “other” on the bill on the same grounds that the bill, while permitting younger students to participate in CTE courses, provides no additional funding to support those programs.
“We know access to dual credit can transform lives, and we are hugely in support of that,” Misha Cherniske of OSPI said. “But as it was just mentioned the critical piece of this bill that was actually the funding for students in sixth grade in CTE was cut out.”
Cheniske added that the office is aware that this year’s difficult budget process is a likely reason why funding was cut out of the bill and that the agency will return in support of a similar bill that provides funding for CTE for sixth graders in future sessions.
The state government faces a looming budget deficit estimated to be between $12 billion and $17 billion, which has forced lawmakers to abandon many new programs that would require additional funding.
CTE, however, has received lots of attention in recent years, often being seen as a new alternative for students that want to go into technical fields without taking the route of a four-year university or for students who are looking to take tuition-free college-credit courses in high school. Vocational education has expanded beyond what it used to be, now offering courses in everything from classic trades to computer science and nursing.
The federal government made investments into CTE as early as 2018, and the state of Washington created its graduation pathways program in 2019, which provides a pathway for high school students to graduate from by passing a series of CTE classes instead of meeting the standard curriculum requirements.
More locally, Centralia College completed the Southwest Flexible Training (SWFT) Center in 2021. It is largely dedicated to programs, training and events designed to connect students directly with the industries where they could work. Most recently, the Centralia College commissioned its mobile CTE classroom, which has been visiting elementary, middle and high schools in Lewis County. That mobile unit is designed specifically to inform local students about programming at the SWFT center, according to recent reporting by The Chronicle.
