2026 Advocacy

We are all feeling the impact of our school district not being adequately funded. Class sizes, additional resources for SpEd, highly capable and MLL students, and teachers and school administrators being asked to do more and more without adequate resources, are impacting everyone in our community, at Whittier and in all Seattle Public Schools. As our state legislature prepares this cycle’s legislative agenda, this is the time to reach out to your representatives and tell them to make public schools a priority this cycle.

Please take some time to reach out to our District 36 representatives:

• Rep Liz Berry: Position 2 – Email Liz
• Rep Julia Reed: Position 1 – Email Julia
• Sen Noel Frame – Email Noel

Here are some suggested talking points that are especially relevant to our school:

• We are especially underfunded when it comes to special education, and we have a higher than typical student population in need of those services. The money we are getting from the state is far from adequate to meet the costs of providing those services.
• Our class sizes are much higher than the prototypical funding model recommends, in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades where our class sizes are roughly 30 students per teacher instead of the recommended 17.  The state is not providing enough funding for our school to get even close to the recommended class sizes, and this has a direct impact on the students’ ability to learn and teachers’ ability to properly see to the needs of each student.

Personal details and information always land with more impact than a pre-drafted template email, so please make this your own. 

For example, a couple of personal anecdotes from our board members: 

• “We noticed a big dropoff in our kid’s academic performance between 1st and 2nd grade at Whittier, when they went from a classroom of 18 kids to a classroom of 30 kids.” This is just one example of how the state is not living up to its duty is failing schools and failing our kids. 
• “As an MLL student, my kid was struggling her first year at SPS, trying to connect with her classmates and understand the material. Because of the size of the class, the classroom teacher could only provide limited support to my kid, without it impacting the rest of the class. Having MLL support staff was critical to her progress, and within 3 semesters she tested out of the MLL program. Because of the number of MLL students at our school relative to other schools in the district, the district is considering eliminating the MLL support position and putting that burden on the classroom teachers. This will have a significant impact on both MLL students and their classmates, as well as teacher retention.”