2026 Legislative Candidate Questionnaire
Danica Noble
Candidate for
State Representative Position 1
32nd Legislative District
1.
Legislative priorities
Seattle Council PTSA: What will be your top three legislative priorities regarding K-12 public education during the 2027 legislative session and why?
Danica Noble: I have children in public schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. I have been involved with PTAs for eight years. Education is central to my platform. My education priorities 1. Fully funding public education with recurring, sustainable, predictable, and equitable funding. For school construction, MSOC, support staff, building maintenance, transportation, curriculum, transition to kindergarten, special education, and more. 2. Advocating for responsible technology in classrooms, including reasonable screen-usage limits in classrooms, guardrails on the collection and use of student data by ed-tech companies, and a ban on generative AI use on student devices outside of media literacy training. 3. Language Access, both for students in terms of the ability to access their education, but also for parents, who need better language resources to access their students’ education. And finally, expansion of the language courses, including immersion programs, for younger students based on proven program models.
2.
State budget priorities and revenue
Seattle Council PTSA: As the Legislature develops the 2027–29 state budget, how would you prioritize K–12 public education alongside other state needs? What changes, if any, to state revenue policies would you support to ensure adequate and sustainable education funding?
Danica Noble: My plan is to make fully funding education my number one budget issue. I know that legislators cannot effectively have dozens of funding priorities, you get a one or two, especially in an “all cuts” budget year. While I plan to work on technology regulations on substantive lawmaking, as fair as the budget, funding education, early education, public schools, and higher education will be my top priority. The millionaire’s tax was sold as a great fix for education, but nothing in that bill requires money to be spent on education. I want to hold the legislature accountable for spending the money to meet their constitutional obligations to make education our paramount duty. That means not letting the pool of money be taken for other options. I will be the first to remind my fellow legislators of our paramount duty and I will welcome involvement from PTA, WEA, WASDA, and more to meet with me regularly to tell me what is working and what is needed.
3.
Levy reliance and regional funding inequity
Seattle Council PTSA: What changes, if any, would you support to reduce school districts' reliance on local levies and address funding inequities between districts?
Danica Noble: The levy program leads to permanent inequities in this state’s funding of education. We need to look at the models of other states that have overcome structural inequities that our model perpetuates. Looking at Massachusetts is where I started. I am in discussion with several legislators and education advocacy organizations about which models we can use to redo the prototypical school model and the levy funding which has not served Washington’s students sufficiently or equitably. Levies were never meant to fund basic education, but they do, all over the 32nd LD. But, in places like Battleground, where three levies have failed, that district has cut core staff and even the most basic services. It is time to change the model. We cannot rely on PTA’s to raise a billion dollars to cover the basics.
4.
Special education funding
Seattle Council PTSA: Do you believe the current state funding formula, including the special education multiplier, adequately covers special education costs? What specific changes, if any, would you support?
Danica Noble: Years of PTA meetings has convinced me that we are not adequately funding special education. Full stop. Lifting the arbitrary cap on special education funding was a start, and the investment into special education in 2025 was another good step, but the state’s own audit showed we are underfunding special education by far more, more than $1 billion dollars. This means students cannot access their right to education, teachers are asked to make heroic actions, and schools are vulnerable to lawsuits. On special education alone we could bring another McCleary lawsuit, but it would take too long and too many kids would be lost in the meanwhile. One reason I am running for office at all is because I believe it will be much faster to fund education if I get elected, and I am the voice that will not stop talking about education, our paramount duty, and why education is the bedrock of our economy, democracy, and future. Special education is one of the most important areas we underfund. And with the federal cuts to education support including IDEA, we need attention on this more than ever.
5.
Materials, supplies, and operating costs (MSOC)
Seattle Council PTSA: Do you believe the state's current MSOC funding formula adequately covers school districts' operating expenses, including utilities, insurance, and technology? What specific changes, if any, would you support?
Danica Noble: Current MSOC funding is woefully inadequate. The funding has not kept up with the skyrocketing costs of insurance and electricity and transportation. I like the idea of having the legislature pay the bill for these non-negotiable costs. That way when a $100 per student increase is required, and the legislature offers $6, we don’t leave the school districts on the hook forcing choices of cutting staff, courses, and in the case of Marysville, a whole period for the day. I have been lobbying for better MSOC funding for years in Olympia, that hasn’t been enough. It is time to make a structural change to make sure these costs are funded with actual dollars not magical math that is supposed to cover these expenses.
6.
Transportation funding
Seattle Council PTSA: What is your assessment of the state's current STARS transportation funding formula? What specific changes, if any, would you support?
Danica Noble: Transportation is one of the top three underfunded categories of funding for education in the state. It doesn't get much attention by the legislature. I have kids in 3 Seattle public schools and none of them even have busses. In the Edmonds school district, many elementary students were going to have to start school super early because there wasn’t enough funding for adequate busses. There are legislative bills to address transportation, but they haven’t passed yet. The legislature often fails to pass good bills when they run out of time, even if they have the votes. Transportation has not gotten enough support and it is key to keeping kids in class and graduating on time. In Seattle, where kids often rely on public transportation, public safety needs to be much stronger to be a viable alternative than carpools and caregiver rides.
7.
Student mental and behavioral health
Seattle Council PTSA: What specific funding or policy changes, if any, would you support to ensure schools have sufficient counselors, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and other mental and behavioral health professionals to meet students' needs?
Danica Noble: The prototypical school model does not adequately fund mental health and behavioral health. It never has. Meanwhile, our students are facing a mental health crisis. And, the infrastructure for special needs students does not cover behavioral specialists. One of the specific ideas I have for short-term funding is to use some of the settlement money from the social media settlements for student mental health. New Mexico is putting $500 million from Meta towards student mental health. We should bring lawsuits against the social media companies to cover the costs of behavioral health. I want to help write the laws to make sure that if Big Tech makes dangerous products and pushes them on kids will have to pay when they move so fast that they break our children’s mental health. I like the student health services, and I have talked to a few of the counselors, they are raising some serious red flags about student use of AI companion chatbots. We need guardrails there. Meanwhile, actual nurses are spread too thin, sometimes PTAs cover that cost. That is not OK.
8.
School safety
Seattle Council PTSA: What does a safe school environment mean to you, and what specific policies or investments would you prioritize to create it? Please address both physical safety and the conditions inside schools, including discipline, student support, and staff capacity to respond to student needs.
Danica Noble: School safety means everyone deserves to feel safe where they are. We are not there yet. I wrote the PTA policy on reducing youth exposure to violence – it was a rewrite to make sure that it included not just physical violence, but also online violence. We have a lot of work to do. We need safe staffing for schools to make sure, at all grades we can have enough resources to prevent and respond to issues. As far as discipline, I would love to see more restorative justice approaches. I love the way Zack Stowell has brought that Robert Eaglestaff. It has been effective in decreasing behavioral problems and it has done so in a way that doesn’t perpetuate historic prejudicial trends. One thing we need more infrastructure is for students facing online harassment. That means training before hand and it also means help with deep fakes, nonconsensual images, and reporting. More media literacy! Less unsupervised YouTube and internet time.
9.
Early learning
Seattle Council PTSA: What is your view of the state's responsibility to expand access to quality early learning, and what would you do in the 2027-29 budget to address unmet needs in communities like ours?
Danica Noble: In my opinion, a society cannot spend a better dollar than on early learning. The science and research are clear, a dollar spent there saves lots of money for the individual and the community later. The cuts last year to transition to kindergarten were devastating. That is a program that has proven to be effective and a life saver for so many students. In places with childcare deserts like South Snohomish, or Spokane, the cuts to that program will leave kids with iPads as babysitters. Thanks to the Ballmer donation, several ECAP seats were saved and even expanded, but that wasn’t the legislature. We cannot rely on billionaires to fund education; the state must meet its paramount duty. I think we should follow New York with free Pre-K and expanding further down. Education justice starts before kindergarten!
10.
Prototypical school funding model
Seattle Council PTSA: The state calculates school funding through the prototypical school funding model, including staffing allocations and student-to-staff ratios. What specific changes, if any, would you support?
Danica Noble: The prototypical school model has failed. It funds a theoretical school that doesn’t exist. It has stiff rigidity that ties the hands at the district and school level and prevents the people working there from making the best allocations for their students. Per capita student funding has led to a negative cycle that leads more and more students to leave public schools and poorer and poorer schools with the same bills for electricity, insurance, etc. In the school funding townhalls over the last years, I always ask the same question, who wants to work on redoing the school funding model? The Legislative session is too short. We need to work on it in the interim, with multiple stakeholders. I want to work on this issue in Olympia. It is urgent.
11.
Millionaires' Tax Revenue
Seattle Council PTSA: Do you support Washington's Millionaires' Tax? Why or why not? If you support it, how do youbelieve the revenue should be allocated, particularly for K–12 public education, and whatspecific changes, if any, would you propose? If you oppose it, what alternative revenue sourcesor funding changes would you propose to meet the state's K–12 education funding obligations?
Danica Noble: I support the millionaire’s tax as a first step in un-regressing our tax system in Washington, but it does not go far enough to reduce the regressive tax burden in this state. And, importantly, there is no provision to tie the revenue collected from the millionaire’s tax to school funding. The tax’s revenue doesn’t even begin to be collected (in a best-case scenario) until 2028, and then it goes into the general fund. I am concerned our legislature will not make the ample provision of education the priority from the revenue that is collected in this way. If I am elected, I will hold the legislature accountable to its constitutional duty to put education first. And, I will fight to make sure this and any other progressive revenue goes toward fully funding education at last.
12.
Family and student participation & accountability
Seattle Council PTSA: How would you ensure that students and families have meaningful opportunities to participate in education policy decisions at the state and district levels? What specific steps would you support to ensure that adopted policies are implemented effectively and that districts are held accountable for following them?
Danica Noble: For years I have collaborated with schools and the PTA to increase civic engagement with caregivers, students, and teachers. Sometimes it only takes the opportunity. I would like to increase engagement through two main channels. First, ensure that we truly reduce any language barriers for caregivers or students to be engaged with school at the local, district, and state level. Second, I support bringing civic education back to our schools and to provide more opportunities for members of our school communities to be involved. If I am elected, I am committed to showing up to local schools and prioritizing meetings with students, caregivers, and school administrators. I am running to be a champion for public education.
