This bill (S-0383.1 / Senate Bill 5135) amends existing law, specifically RCW 28A.150.230, to make common school district boards of directors the final authority for setting policies that ensure the quality and appropriate content and extent of the district’s educational program. It requires boards to adopt policies that establish performance criteria and an evaluation process for superintendents, classified staff, certificated personnel (including administrative staff), and district programs; to report annually to the state superintendent of public instruction the evaluation criteria and rubrics, descriptions of each rating, and the number of staff in each rating for each employee group; to determine final staff assignments using board-enumerated needs and data with attention to high-need schools; to provide the local community with information about hiring, assignment, termination, and evaluation policies; to set instructional hours not less than those required by RCW 28A.150.220 or State Board of Education rules; to allocate staff time; to set final curriculum standards tailored to district needs; and to evaluate teaching materials in response to complaints from parents, guardians, or custodians under the cited complaint statutes. The bill also repeals RCW 28A.300.475, the statute on comprehensive sexual health education. These are procedural and governance changes affecting district boards, district staff groups, the office of the superintendent of public instruction, and parents/guardians who may file material complaints. The text provided does not show an effective date for the amendments or repeal, contains an unclear parenthetical deletion in one subsection, and does not supply definitions for terms like “quality education” or “high-need schools,” nor does it show how the changes interact with any other statutes beyond the cross-references cited.

If enacted, local school boards would gain clear final control over what counts as a quality education in their districts: they would set curriculum standards, decide instructional hours (no less than current minimums), allocate staff time, make final staff assignments with special attention to high-need schools, and create evaluation systems for superintendents, classified and certificated staff and district programs. Districts would have to adopt these policies, make them public to their communities, and report annually to the state superintendent the evaluation criteria, rubrics, descriptions of ratings, and counts of staff in each rating, which will add administrative work and likely require time, training, and possible reallocation of local resources without any funding provided in the text. Boards, district superintendents, principals, teachers and classified staff are most affected: boards gain authority and discretion over staffing, curriculum, and evaluations, while school staff will face new or changed evaluation and assignment processes. Parents gain formal complaint rights about materials but the repeal of the statewide comprehensive sexual health education statute removes that existing state framework, creating local variability and potential uncertainty or disputes over sex education content. Important details are missing from the extracted text—there is no effective date, key terms like “quality education” and “high-need schools” aren’t defined here, and the interaction with other laws is not explained—so the exact timing and limits of these changes are unclear.