This bill reenacts and amends RCW 28A.150.260 to prescribe how the state distributes basic education funding to common school districts. It requires the governor to and allows the superintendent of public instruction to recommend a distribution formula based on prototypical elementary, middle, and high schools and minimum staffing and nonstaff costs. The superintendent must post a user-friendly per-pupil allocation report for each district (general apportionment, special education, learning assistance, transitional bilingual, highly capable, and career and technical education) on OSPI’s main website and districts must link to that report; legislative budget documents must report statewide average per-pupil allocations. The bill makes many funding and procedural changes rather than creating a criminal offense or changing penalties. It specifies minimum staffing allocations by school prototype for many staff types, requires OSPI rulemaking to allocate certain support-staff funds proportionate to a district’s demonstrated ratios and to prioritize staff with appropriate certificates, and directs OSPI to require districts to use additional 2024–25 funding for paraeducators, office support, and noninstructional aides to increase staffing, prevent layoffs, or increase salaries and to report how funds are used. Beginning in 2025–26 the omnibus appropriations act must set minimum per-certificated-staff-unit funding above prototypes for small schools ($14,141.10, adjusted annually for inflation) and specified per-FTE career and technical education amounts ($1,810.11 for exploratory and preparatory CTE courses), and must set minimum per-FTE materials, supplies, and operating allocations for 2025–26 thereafter adjusted for inflation. The bill also sets minimum service levels for the learning assistance, transitional bilingual, and highly capable programs (hours per week and 15 students per teacher as statewide averages), requires excess-cost enhancements for students with disabilities, limits CTE funding to OSPI-approved courses, and requires biennial review of the distribution formula by the superintendent and governor. The act includes procedural controls and contingencies: definitions and the FTE enrollment measure are to be set by OSPI rules and included in the superintendent’s budget request, revisions to the FTE definition require approval by the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees, the Office of Financial Management will review reported FTE monthly, and a new section provides that if specific funding for this act is not included in the omnibus appropriations act referencing this act by June 30, 2025, the act is null and void. The provided text is incomplete in places (numeric tables and later subsections are cut off and some cross-referenced provisions are missing), so some detailed values and provisions that depend on the omnibus appropriations act or on missing subsections are not available in these extracts.

If enacted and funded, school districts will get clearer, higher baseline dollars for staffing-related materials and CTE courses beginning in 2025-26: a guaranteed $14,141.10 per certificated staff unit for small schools and $1,810.11 per FTE student for CTE course types, plus specified per-student allocations and minimum hours of extra instruction for learning assistance, transitional bilingual, and highly capable programs. In practice this will likely push districts to hire or reassign staff (or pay existing staff more), schedule the extra instructional hours, and document how funds for paraeducators and support aides were used in 2024-25 to prevent layoffs or increase staffing/salaries; OSPI will increase reporting, rulemaking, and course approval work, and OFM will conduct monthly enrollment reviews, increasing oversight and administrative workload. The people most affected are district leaders, small schools, CTE programs, and students in high-poverty, bilingual, special assistance, and highly capable programs: districts may see higher recurring costs to meet the service-hour and staffing expectations and will need to follow OSPI rules and post per-pupil allocation reports on their websites. Important details about exact dollar amounts, scaling factors, and many implementation rules are left to the omnibus appropriations act and OSPI rulemaking, and the act becomes null and void if the Legislature does not provide specific funding tied to this bill by June 30, 2025, so the ultimate fiscal impact is uncertain until the omnibus budget and OSPI rules are finalized.