July 26, 2018
Dear Legislators:
Thank you for your continued hard work on behalf of students, educators, and families. Over the past
several years, I know you have put in countless hours of work meeting basic education expectations. I
continue to be grateful for your perseverance as we work together to transform our K–12 system into
one that provides equitable opportunities to all students.
I received two letters and a few telephone calls over the past several weeks from some of you
encouraging OSPI to offer additional guidance to school districts on topics that were addressed in the
“McCleary bills” – EHB 2242 (2017) and E2SSB 6362 (2018). There are four parts to this
communication:
1) The guidance we already provided to districts related to enrichment activities, four-year
balanced budget requirements, and pre-ballot levy reviews;
2) The school-day taskforce established in E2SSB 6362 (Section 209) that will play a role in future
basic education and collective bargaining considerations;
3) The enrichment taskforce you created in EHB 2242 (Section 905); and
4) Budget items we will advance in the 2019 legislative session that do not need taskforce work to
determine their critical importance to student achievement.
All four of these topics are connected, and their sequence is important for both your budget and policy
work and the work of OSPI to implement your actions.
Current Guidance
OSPI provided guidance to school districts on several occasions following your actions in 2017 and
2018. In September 2017, we provided school districts with preliminary guidance on many of the
changes found in the first “McCleary bill” (EHB 2242), including restrictions on supplemental contracts
(some of which were removed the following year when you adopted E2SSB 6362), pre-ballot levy
reviews, and local four-year balanced budget requirements. In October 2017, I gave additional
guidance to school districts specifically about the use of local levies and the broad authority you
provided districts in Section 501(2)(a) of EHB 2242: “Enrichment activities are permitted under this
section if they provide supplementation beyond the state.” In addition to this very broad statement,
you detailed at least nine examples of allowable enrichment activities in EHB 2242: Hours beyond the
minimum instructional offerings, additional staff for class-size reductions beyond the prototypical
model, and more. On April 6, 2018, we provided districts with a sample salary grid as directed by the
Legislature.
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 On April 24, 2018, I sent a joint letter with State Auditor McCarthy reminding districts of their
obligation to establish a separate local revenue sub-fund as directed by the Legislature. That letter also
detailed the timing of State Auditor’s Office compliance audits related to the entire scope of changes
you established in E2SSB 6362 following the 2018 legislative session.
In short, we provided guidance to school districts following each of your actions to ensure consistent
communication and clear expectations of districts as they carry out your budget and policy priorities.
What is clear to me is that you do not all agree on what you passed or what was meant by one aspect
of a policy or another. We have worked with your staff to seek clarification and talked with many of
the budget writers, McCleary negotiators, and members of leadership, at times, to capture as much of
the common intent as we could prior to communicating with districts. Where there remains clear
differences among legislators about intent, we have taken a very plain-language approach to
interpreting your actions. When you said enrichment activities are permitted if they “provide
supplementation beyond the state” we took that very literally. When in E2SSB 6362 you attempted to
limit compensation increases in 2018–19 but provided different language for certificated staff and
classified staff than you did for administrators, we are compelled to interpret that as having a different
approach between employee groups. Specifically, you said increases in administrator salary steps are
based on “the prior year’s practice.” However, you dropped “prior year’s practice” and simply said
“specified in the agreement” when it came to certificated and classified school employees. You also
give the example of allowable salary increases in six additional categories above inflation. In short, I
believe you adopted a wide open collective bargaining framework, even in 2018–19, where there
appears to be some interest in limiting compensation.
Unfortunately, there are massive differences in opportunities across the state for compensation
changes. Because of more state funds, large regionalization amounts, and even some additional
resources for the new experience factor, some districts have the resources to give substantial increases
within the parameters you set. While others (sometimes neighboring districts) got none of the
resources described above and do not have the ability to match the increases of some of their peer
districts. The confluence of inconsistent compensation models paired with open bargaining language
will continue to create difficult and often contentious relationships at the local collective bargaining
table. We look forward to working with you to solve some of these challenges next session.
School Day Taskforce
Section 209 of EHB 2242 tasked OSPI with convening a group of education stakeholders to develop
recommendations on ways to better define a school day. Basic education is framed by three
parameters, and you defined two of them: Instructional hours (roughly 1,000), a school year (180
days), and the yet to be defined school day. The school day is the third leg of the stool. What can
students and parents/families expect as a minimum service level from a regular school day? The
answer to this question shapes future considerations of what basic education is vs. enrichment. It also
shapes collective bargaining. Today, 295 school districts independently determine the definition and
details of a school day. I believe a statewide framework is timely and critical. We will be taking on this
work from the lens of students and educators. How much direct instructional time is needed? How do
we redesign the workweek to support both educators and students in academic, physical, and mental
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 health? How much planning of instruction and evaluation of student learning is needed to provide a
basic education? How much meeting and collaborating with parents/guardians and other educators is
needed to positively support student learning? These questions then drive what we should expect, at a
minimum, from educators, as well as additional investments that will be needed to support educators
in their work. I believe this work can lead to a legislative definition of a school day that serves as a
minimum from which districts and local bargaining units can begin future negotiations. We need
statewide consistency on this question, and I fully expect to deliver an actionable recommendation to
you during the 2019 legislative session.
Enrichment Taskforce
Section 905 of EHB 2242 (2017) directs OSPI to establish a “technical work group….to review the
staffing enrichments to the program of basic education…” In some circles, this has become known as
the class size reduction taskforce; however, there is no mention of class size in the proviso. However,
we assume the language you used would be inclusive of class size reduction considerations in addition
to other issues that improve student achievement:
“a possible phase-in plan of staffing enrichments that prioritizes the enrichments that are
research or evidence-based strategies for reducing the opportunity gap, assisting struggling
students, enhancing the education outcomes for all students, or strengthening support for
all school and school district staff.”
Per the legislation, this report is due to you in December 2019, well after the upcoming legislative
session. I can only believe you wanted the existing “McCleary plan” to roll out. You wanted a first
round of bargaining to occur to see what kind of items were consistently emerging as enrichment
activities that might be logical candidates for a statewide approach. I also assume you want meaningful
expenditure data to help inform how districts are spending local levy dollars now that they are
required to establish a local revenue sub-fund. We will deliver on all of these points in our 2019 report,
with the initial work likely to begin this fall.
In short, I believe you got the sequence for all of this complex work correct:
1) Give guidance in 2017 (which we have);
2) Clearly define the school day so all districts are working from a common baseline (to occur
with your action in 2018); and
3) Develop statewide, possibly even new, prototypical approaches to current enrichment
activities that should be statewide priorities (to occur in 2019).
I do want to note that I asked you for authority to immediately define the school day in rule so we
could have this in place before collective bargaining got underway following the 2018 session, but
understandably, you wanted this back as a recommendation so you could take that action. Please note,
this lack of definition, the shortcomings of the regional pay model, and several other factors, have
already created substantial conflict in the bargaining environment from one district to another. One
district might be asked to pay for enrichment activities above 5.5 hours of instruction, another above
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 6.5 hours, while another is above 7.5 hours. The lack of a common statewide minimum school day
expectation may create significant bargaining tension until you take action.
Budget Items for 2019
We are developing our 2019–21 biennial budget request for you and the governor to consider. At a
minimum, our operating budget request will ask you to make changes to the prototypical school model
and/or basic education statutes to address six areas that we absolutely know are critical for student
achievement and safety. These are items and investments that do not need to wait a year or two while
taskforces and workgroups press on with the work you directed. These investments are critical to
student achievement now. Districts across the state are already spending significant local dollars to
carry out some, while others are emerging issues that should not wait any further. These include:
1. Additional supports for students with disabilities (following a taskforce you assigned to OSPI);
2. School safety improvements;
3. Additional school counselors (especially in middle school);
4. Adequate numbers of school nurses;
5. More family and community engagement coordinators; and
6. A new prototypical approach for students served in our juvenile justice facilities.
I continue to be grateful for the work you did to fund the prototypical model established in 2009 and
2010. I am also convinced that the world of student mental health, physical health, school safety, and
the injustices of persistent opportunity gaps compel us to begin the process of transforming basic
education into the system of the future, not the system of the past.
Thanks again to you and your staff teams for all of your great work on behalf of students, educators,
and families. At OSPI, we never stop thinking about ways to improve student achievement, and we
promise to never let you stop thinking about it either! 
Please call or email if you have follow-up questions.

Chris Reykdal
Superintendent of Public Instruction
360-790-3151 (cell)
Resources
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Guidance/FAQs on EHB 2242
Guidance on accounting changes
Salary Grid Workgroup
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