In the past, Dan Steele "has provided much information on the bills to implement recommendations adopted by the Joint Task Force on Basic Education Finance (HB 1410/SB 5444) and the bills to implement the Full Funding Coalition's education finance proposal (HB 1817/SB 5607). By now, you have probably heard that both sets of bills are essentially dead. Bad news? Not really. Early on, we anticipated that the Full Funding Coalition bills were not going to be acted upon. We were pleased — although somewhat surprised — when the Senate bill received a public hearing and the House bill was reviewed in a work session; however, any further action was only a very remote possibility. Knowing our bills would not be adopted, we focused on highlighting some of the major concerns we had with HB 1410/SB 5444. In the past few weeks, the battle between the two sets of bills intensified and, although we strongly advocated for a reasonable compromise that would allow a new education finance system to be put in place, folks in the field were starting to take sides in the fight — and were taking shots at the "other side." We feared that the growing in-fighting would actually cause both sets of bills to be rejected as legislators grew weary of the fight and chose to focus on other pressing issues. Earlier this week, both sets of bills were technically rejected; however, a group of legislators stepped up and introduced new bills to create a new education funding system. HB 2261/SB 6048 currently only include one section, an "intent" section, but the idea is to use these new, as yet untainted bills, as the vehicles for action. When these bills were introduced, education stakeholders were called together and we were all told, collectively, that the "us versus them" fight between the competing sets of education finance bills needed to stop and the new bills would be used to carry forward a compromise plan. Although there is much disagreement about what a final plan should look like, stakeholders immediately began discussing items in which there was a broad consensus. Three initial pieces in which there was broad agreement were:

1) The need for a new definition of Basic Education. There were disagreements over what should be included in the new definition; however, it was agreed that a new definition — and funding — was needed.

2) The adoption of a new, flexible allocation system based on a prototype schools model. The prototype schools approach is one of the few specific items included in both the Task Force bills and the Coalition bills.

3) Adding a new "oversight" group to recommend on-going changes. A new, non-partisan Commission for Quality Education in Washington — as suggested by the Coalition — was mentioned; however, the consensus was that there needed to be oversight. Specific details were not discussed about who or what should provide that oversight.