This bill creates a new legislative finding that the public has a right to information about local schools and amends RCW 28A.320.090 to expressly authorize a school district board of directors to expend funds to prepare and distribute information to the general public using any medium, format, tenor, or frequency. It also creates a new section (Sec. 1) that lists three permissible topics for such communications: explaining the district’s instructional program, operation, and maintenance; explaining district ballot propositions; and informing residents about how to register to vote and cast a ballot. The text expressly states that nothing in the section authorizes preparing or distributing information to promote or oppose any school district election. Legally, this is a procedural change expanding and clarifying school board authority to create and disseminate public communications and specifying allowed topics while adding an explicit prohibition on election advocacy. It modifies existing law rather than creating a new criminal offense or changing penalties; the extracted facts include no enforcement mechanisms, funding limits, or penalty provisions. The amendment affects school district boards and residents/the general public. The bill was prefiled 12/17/2025, read for the first time 01/12/2026, and was referred to the Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education; sponsors are Senators Cortes, Frame, Pedersen, and C. Wilson. The extracted text does not define key terms (for example, “general public,” “instructional program,” or “school district election”) and does not show how this amendment interacts with other statutes or any administrative procedures.

If enacted, school district boards would have clear, broad authority to spend district funds to create and share information with the public by any medium (including social media) about three topics: how the district’s instructional program, operation, and maintenance work; what a district ballot proposition is; and how residents register and vote. In practice this lets districts expand communications efforts—hiring staff or contractors, buying ads, printing materials, or posting online—using existing budgets, and gives residents access to more official explanations of programs and ballot measures while prohibiting explicit promotion or opposition to district elections. Key uncertainties make effects partly open-ended: the bill text does not define terms like “general public” or what separates neutral explanation from advocacy, nor does it set spending limits, enforcement rules, or how this interacts with other laws, so districts may vary widely in how much they spend and how they present information and disputes over content could arise.