Gerry Pollet

Candidate for
State Representative Position 1
46th Legislative District

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? 

Gerry Pollet: I spent several years developing a new special ed funding formula to fully fund special education in HB 1310 / SB 5263. In 2025, we adopted key portions of the formula, increasing funding for special ed by hundreds of millions of dollars and ending the unconscionable cap on how many students with disabilities that the state was funding in each school district for special education. How we did this: When many legislators questioned school districts claim that they were spending over $400 million a year from levy funds because the state was not funding special education, I proposed that the legislative auditor determine how much the state was failing to fund. The legislative auditor documented that our school districts were being forced to spend $590 million a year on special ed which the state should be paying for. This enabled me (with many kudos also to Senator Jamie Pedersen) to win passage of two fundamental steps in changing the formula and increasing special ed funding to cover 40% of the deficit. Now, I’m returning to pass the remaining elements of the formula. Those include: a) increasing the multiplier; and b) eliminating the “donut hole” between how the funds provided for each student with an IEP and those students whose costs are so high that they reach a safety net threshold. To win this in a year that the state faces large deficits until the Millionaires Tax kicks in will require new progressive revenues that can be collected starting next year. Closing huge corporate tax loopholes that I discuss above would provide that immediate education funding.

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? 

Gerry Pollet: Funding “basic education” is the State’s Paramount Duty. Obviously, operating costs (MSOC), such as the utilities to keep a school building open and safe, must be recognized as part of basic education. As such these inflationary increases should automatically be included in the “maintenance level” budget every year. These costs are included in the maintenance level, which is automatically increased for inflation, for all state agencies. Of course, the operating costs and inflation should be automatically included in the state budget for public schools. I will be introducing legislation to include these costs automatically in the state’s maintenance level funding working with State PTSA, School Directors Association, WEA, AFT-WA, SEIU and Superintendent Reykdal.

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? 

Gerry Pollet: Transportation is the third major driver of our school districts’ deficits. The state’s School Transportation Funding formula (STARS) is designed to shortchange school districts by not funding actual costs; ignoring the tremendous differences in costs between congested urban districts, suburban and rural districts; and not funding unique costs districts have to incur to ensure homeless students and students with disabilities can safely get to and from school. I will continue to fight for fully funding each of these elements. I will also fight to fully fund the cost to move to electric school buses, which are far healthier for our children than diesel buses.

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?

Gerry Pollet: I was the prime sponsor of the five fold increase we won in the formula for nurses, social workers, counselors, psychologists. Before this legislation, the state was only funding .07 of a nurse for each prototypical elementary school, for example. Now, each school has state funding for a nurse approximately 60% of the time. That leave a huge gap that the state should be filling – and the gap is wider for counselors, social workers, school psychologists… Until we dump the prototypical school funding formula for a model that fully funds schools, taking into account the higher costs for staff to live in Seattle and central Puget Sound, we need to step up and use new progressive revenues to increase the formulas to fund one nurse for each school and to meet national standards for ratios of counselors and psychologists to students. We have epidemic levels of student mental and behavioral health needs. Research shows that social media has been a significant contribution to this. That is why I have been a strong supporter of removing cell phones during school time. But we also have to enact state legislation barring social media companies from offering accounts to youth that do not have time limits, age verification and barring algorithms designed to addict developing brains. As a Seattle PTSA activist and UW School of Public Health faculty, I was a leader in advocating for Seattle to fund school-based health care centers and mental health providers to serve students and their families. I also led the public health effort to ensure that high school and college students at every school in Washington have access to free opioid reversal (Narcan/ naloxone) nasal spray. Most teen overdoses occur in the company of another teen. This legislation has saved untold young lives.

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.

Gerry Pollet: Every student deserves a safe supportive educational environment. Every parent expects their child to return home healthy and safe every day. Gun violence requires actions that include, but are far from limited to, our schools. We can harden buildings (and I support state capital funding to do so), but that will not change the tragic fact that guns are now the leading cause of death for our children and teens in the United States. 1,300 youth die from gun suicide each year. That’s why I am a leader for safe gun storage laws, including holding adults responsible when their guns were not safely stored. I’m proud to be the endorsed candidate of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. I’m also working with Ceasefire NW, Mothers and Grandmothers Against Gun Violence and experts at the UW School of Public Health (where I teach) to develop and implement evidence-based gun violence suicide prevention and intervention education for students and staff. I led the fight for many years to end the use of isolation and restraint of students. The students who are most likely to be injured (and children die every year in the US due to physical restraints in schools) are children with disabilities in special education, Black and Native American children. Under my legislation, schools may no longer plan to use isolation restraints on students and use is limited to when exigent circumstances require use to prevent harm to the student, another student, staff of serious physical damage. Training provided under my legislation has dramatically reduced use of isolation and restraint and greatly reduced the numbers of students who are injured or traumatized. Seattle’s policies show that the state law can, and should, go further. When you send your child to school you don’t expect them to suffer lowered IQ and permanent learning and neurologic harm from drinking lead in the school water. As a UW School of Public Health faculty, I developed and passed the best legislation in the US to test and remove lead from our children’s school water. How widespread is the problem? Just this year, the sink in the cafeteria at Ingraham HS was tested to have lead 220 times higher than the acceptable level in our state law!

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?

Gerry Pollet: Basic Education cannot remain only as defined a hundred years ago. We know that quality early learning is vital for children to succeed in K-12. We also know that providing early assessment and support for disabilities with IEPs through public Pre-K and TTK programs changes the lives of children, greatly enhances their ability to learn with their peers, and reduces by over 40% the need for IEPs by the time a child is in first grade. I will be fighting to restore and expand funding for public school Transition to Kindergarten programs and bring forward the date for early learning to be a universal right for every child aged 3-5. Quality early learning is more than childcare! It needs to be a universal right as part of basic education in Washington. Early learning is the building block for all other educational success. Every child from age 3 to 5 should participate in high quality early learning to prepare them for kindergarten. High quality early learning educators and trained childcare providers are also essential to identifying disabilities early in life. Early intervention, including special education in the pre-K years will often allow children to enter kindergarten having had the interventions that enable them to be included in general classrooms without further needs. I believe in greatly expanding Washington’s early learning program (EACAP) and ensuring that parents know the quality ratings for early learning programs and can compare them before enrolling. I was an early sponsor for adopting, and defender of, a capital gains tax in Washington, which generates up to a half a billion dollars a year for early learning and education from people who are so wealthy that they have over $262,000 in capital gains (2025) on investments (not including your home or retirement accounts). I’m one of the state’s leaders tackling the often overlooked need for the State to invest in training our early learning educators and childcare providers; and ensuring that certificated early learning educators are paid just like kindergarten and elementary certificated teachers. In the Millionaires Tax, we committed to 5% of the revenue – over $150 million a year – to expand access to quality early learning. That’s only a down payment for expansion.

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?

Gerry Pollet: I support moving to a true funding formula based on the actual costs of educating each child - recognizing each child's unique needs and the regional differences in school costs. The prototypical school funding formula was never designed to cover the costs that were being incurred at the time it was adopted, and was certainly not intended to fully fund education. We need to be developing a funding formula that is based on the needs of each student, not providing funds based on a a hypothetical average school. We need to automatically include in the state budget the annual inflationary costs that eat into school districts funding. Every state agency automatically gets that inflation adjustment, but school districts have to fund increased utility and insurance costs out of their school levies. That’s killing our school districts, increasing class sizes and prevents districts from paying living wages to instructional aides and support staff.

11.

Millionaires' Tax Revenue

Seattle Council PTSA: Do you support Washington's Millionaires' Tax? Why or why not? If you support it, how do you believe the revenue should be allocated, particularly for K–12 public education, and what specific 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?

Gerry Pollet: I worked hard to pass the Millionaires’ Tax, and continue to work to ensure we defend it on the ballot. The Millionaires’ Tax includes the amendment I proposed (and fought for weeks to have included) to ensure a significant portion of the revenue from the Millionaires Tax will be used to INCREASE funding for our public education. “Amply providing” for public education is our Paramount Duty under the State Constitution. As passed by the Senate and House Finance, leaders only wanted the language to say funds would be used to “maintain” funding for public education. It was not ok to say the Millionaires Tax would simply “maintain” funding for schools. Our schools are falling further and further into deficits with cuts that deny our children their right to education. Our level of state funding for public education has fallen to only 43% of the budget from 50%. After weeks of advocacy, I secured the language adopted to INCREASE funding for basic education “by strengthening high-quality instruction and expanding student supports.” This reflects my longstanding leadership as a top voice in the Legislature to fully fund education, to offer free quality early education (including pre-K / Transition to Kindergarten) as a right of every child in Washington and to provide access to the opportunities of postsecondary education to every resident. My top priorities in the Legislature – entirely interwoven – are to fund education at all levels and make our tax system much more fair and sustainable to be able to do so. Now, my job will be to use my position as one of the small House Appropriations Committee groups providing in-depth recommendations on the Early Learning, K-12 and postsecondary education budgets to fiercely advocate for significantly increasing funding.

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?

Gerry Pollet: Strong PTSAs lead to openness and better school board and state education decisions. That’s why I volunteered and continue to work with PTSAs in the 46th, Seattle and statewide to encourage and train advocates, who will lead school districts and become legislators committed to education. I’m recognized as a leading advocate for openness in government. I championed and prime sponsored the legislation that ensures every school board meeting and city council meeting includes your right to comment. I continue to work with school board and PTSA members who understand that school board members should have training in state school governance requirements, budgeting and openness. We are exploring if we should move forward with legislation in 2027. LGBTQ+ students and students who seek reproductive health care are under attack by right wing political organizations under the guise of parental rights to know when students seek counseling, share thoughts about gender identity or seek reproductive health care. I was one of the few Democrats who refused to empower these right wing voices and voted against the so-called parents rights initiative from being adopted. I warned that adoption only empowered the right wing organizers while harming youth, which led to the current ballot fight. I am proud to be known as the most accessible legislator in Seattle, and perhaps in the state. I hold drop-in discussions every weekend during session. Education legislation and funding are the predominant issue people come to discuss. My commitment to these meetings stems from organizing parent lobbying trips to Olympia for our PTSAs. It took weeks of organizing, 3 to 4 hours of roundtrip commuting in carpools or a bus rental, to have 3 fifteen minute meetings with our legislators. Typically, one would have to cancel and one would only have 5 minutes. So, I committed to not making parents and educators go to Olympia to see their legislator. Instead, I come to you. That commitment also includes coming to your PTSA meetings – so please ask me.