This amendment changes existing law (RCW 28A.405.415) governing annual bonuses for certificated instructional staff who hold National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification. It preserves a $5,000 base bonus established in 2007-08 with subsequent increases tied to inflation (noting no increase occurred for 2013-14 and 2014-15), provides an additional $5,000 bonus for staff meeting specified high-poverty school criteria, requires bonuses be paid as a lump sum, and excludes these bonuses from a district’s salary schedule, average salary, and related salary limitations. The amendment adds a special eligibility rule for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years for schools that provide meals at no charge under RCW 28A.235.135 and that met the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s (OSPI) high-poverty definition during 2022-23. It also expressly suspends payment of these bonuses for the 2025-26, 2026-27, 2027-28, and 2028-29 school years. The text references OSPI rulemaking for the definition of “high poverty school,” the USDA community eligibility provision for timing, and identifies the Office of Financial Management as the bill requestor. Legally, this is a statutory amendment that makes procedural and eligibility changes to an existing compensation program, including a temporary suspension of payments. The chunk leaves important details unspecified or potentially inconsistent: the definition of “high poverty school” is delegated to OSPI rule and not provided here, the precise method for calculating the inflation adjustment is not stated, and there is an apparent conflict between a provision extending eligibility into 2025-26 and a provision that prohibits any bonus payments in 2025-26; the excerpt may be part of a larger bill and other sections could resolve these issues.

If enacted, National Board–certified teachers who have been receiving a roughly $5,000 annual bonus (adjusted for inflation in most years) and an extra $5,000 for meeting high-poverty school criteria would not receive any of those bonuses for the 2025-26 through 2028-29 school years, while bonuses remain structured as lump-sum payments and continue to be excluded from district average-salary calculations. The immediate practical effects are a loss of supplemental pay for certified teachers in those years and a corresponding reduction in district payout obligations and state budgeting for those bonus payments; the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction will also need to apply or update its high-poverty school rule and handle a special eligibility rule tied to schools that provided meals at no charge in 2022-23 for the 2024-25 period. Key implementation uncertainties could affect how people experience these changes: the bill text delegates the high-poverty definition to OSPI, does not define who exactly counts as certificated instructional staff, does not specify how inflation adjustments are calculated, and contains an apparent conflict about whether a special 2025-26 eligibility applies while bonuses are otherwise suspended that year. Those gaps create short-term confusion and risk for teachers planning income and for districts and state officials budgeting and issuing guidance.