Stonier joins committee to oversee new education reforms for struggling schools
State Rep. Monica Stonier was tapped recently to help monitor a new education-reform law that lets state officials step in when public schools display a record of failure.
Along with approving roughly $1 billion for education, state legislators this year passed some education reforms, including Senate Bill 5329. That law allows the state’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to intervene when schools consistently fail to meet education goals.
It also creates the bipartisan Education Accountability Oversight Committee to monitor the new law. Stonier, D-Vancouver, will have a seat on that committee.
Under the new law, which went into effect on Sunday, OSPI must create new guidelines to help the state’s lowest-performing schools, as well as guidelines to help them improve. If funding is considered a problem, then the law allows the Legislature to provide more money to those schools.
If after three years, the poorly performing schools do not improve, the law allows OSPI to intervene and establish more specific guidelines at each school.
“Every child can be successful if we give them the right tools to learn,” Stonier said in a statement about the new committee. “Too many kids are falling through the cracks. We can do better for these kids. We need to do better.”
Stonier, a teaching coach for the Evergreen school district, was elected to the House last November. She serves on its K-12 education committee.
Her duties on the new committee the will kickoff this fall.
Stevie Mathieu
Stevie Mathieu is a political writer at The Columbian. Contact her at 360-735-4523 or stevie.mathieu@columbian.com or www.facebook.com/reportermathieu or www.twitter.com/col_politics.