VICTORY! Comprehensive sexual health education bill is enroute to Governor Inslee

Democ­rats in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture today took the final steps to send Sen­a­tor Claire Wilson’s com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion bill to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, vot­ing along par­ty lines to con­cur in the amend­ments that the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives made to ESSB 5395 after an acri­mo­nious floor debate.

Orig­i­nal­ly request­ed by Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal, the final ver­sion of ESSB 5395 has three main objec­tives:

• Requires every pub­lic school to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion [CSHE] that meets cer­tain requirements.
• Directs pub­lic schools to use review tools when choos­ing sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion cur­ric­u­la that is not on a list devel­oped by the Office of the Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruction.
• Requires school dis­tricts to annu­al­ly iden­ti­fy to OSPI any cur­ric­u­la used to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health education

Wash­ing­ton State cur­rent­ly does not require school dis­tricts to pro­vide CSHE. Now, that is set to change. “Every pub­lic school must pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion to each stu­dent by the 2022–23 school year. This require­ment is phased in begin­ning with all pub­lic school stu­dents in grades six to twelve in the 2021–22 school year, and then all pub­lic school stu­dents in the 2022–23 school year,” non­par­ti­san staff explained in their final analy­sis of the bill.

Par­ents and guardians still have the option of excus­ing their chil­dren from receiv­ing com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion by mak­ing a for­mal writ­ten request.

Furi­ous Sen­ate Repub­li­cans attempt­ed to shut down the debate on the bill after leg­isla­tive staff mis­tak­en­ly updat­ed the bil­l’s leg­isla­tive web­page to indi­cate that the bill had received a con­cur­rence vote pri­or to the vote actu­al­ly tak­ing place. They failed. The Sen­ate vot­ed to con­tin­ue con­sid­er­ing the bill, vot­ed to con­cur in the House amend­ments, and then vot­ed again on final passage.

The roll call on final pas­sage was as follows:

ESSB 5395
Sex­u­al health education
Sen­ate vote on Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the House
3/7/2020

Yeas: 27; Nays: 21; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, McCoy, Mul­let, Nguyen, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Stan­ford, Takko, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Erick­sen, For­tu­na­to, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, Muz­za­ll, O’Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, Walsh, War­nick, Wil­son (Lyn­da), Zeiger

Excused: Sen­a­tor Hobbs

Sen­a­tor Hobbs did not vote. The oth­er Democ­rats vot­ed aye and all the Repub­li­cans vot­ed nay. The con­cur­rence vote was iden­ti­cal to — and imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ed — the vote on final pas­sage. Most of the cau­cus posed for a pho­to with State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier fol­low­ing the proceedings.

“The hard work that we put into this bill — in both the House and Sen­ate — is well worth it because it will improve safe­ty for chil­dren statewide,” Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son said in a state­ment released by the cau­cus. “We must ensure that our kids have the tools and knowl­edge they need to rec­og­nize and resist inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. This impor­tant edu­ca­tion will help pre­vent younger kids from being tar­get­ed by pedophiles, and help teens who feel pres­sured to have sex.”

“It also helps stu­dents stay healthy in con­sen­su­al rela­tion­ships,” Wil­son added. “Stud­ies con­sis­tent­ly show that the most effec­tive pro­grams include com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health or HIV edu­ca­tion — or both — and the com­pre­hen­sive approach is proven to reduce unin­tend­ed preg­nan­cy and STIs.”

Wil­son empha­sized that the bill does not man­date any cur­ricu­lum. It only requires that CSHE be taught once each year from kinder­garten until sixth grade and then twice a year there­after, with all cur­ricu­lum to be “age appro­pri­ate”. School dis­tricts retain the flex­i­bil­i­ty to decide what cur­ricu­lum they would like to offer stu­dents in the com­mu­ni­ties they serve, but can­not opt to offer any CSHE at all.

Repub­li­can law­mak­ers bizarrely insist that the bill is mul­ti­ple degrees of awful, and the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty claims it will mount a ref­er­en­dum cam­paign against the bill if Gov­er­nor Inslee signs it (which he will).

In a ref­er­en­dum, a bill passed by the Leg­is­la­ture is placed before vot­ers for approval or rejec­tion. Ref­er­en­da can be leg­isla­tive­ly ordered or ini­ti­at­ed by peti­tion. A leg­isla­tive­ly ordered ref­er­en­dum is not pre­sent­ed to the gov­er­nor for sig­na­ture. A ref­er­en­dum ini­ti­at­ed by cit­i­zen peti­tion can only be insti­gat­ed fol­low­ing the gov­er­nor’s approval of the legislation.

Ref­er­en­dum sig­na­ture dri­ves must take place with­in the span of nine­ty days, and as of 2017, must gath­er 129,811 valid sig­na­tures (a fig­ure that is equiv­a­lent to four per­cent of the num­ber that vot­ed in the last elec­tion for governor).

NPI’s research finds extreme­ly strong and broad sup­port for ESSB 5395.

67% of like­ly Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sur­veyed last autumn expressed sup­port for the bill, while just 22% were opposed and 11% were not sure.

Cou­ple that research with the fact that a ref­er­en­dum would appear on the Novem­ber 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot — which is when the elec­torate tends to be much larg­er and more pro­gres­sive — and you’ve got a very favor­able envi­ron­ment in which to defend the leg­is­la­tion if it were sub­ject­ed to a pub­lic vote.

ESSB 5395 is one of our leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for 2020. We’re delight­ed to see it leave the Leg­is­la­ture and head to Gov­er­nor Inslee. Con­grat­u­la­tions to State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier, Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son, and all who worked on this bill for their efforts. Spe­cial thanks to Sen­a­tors Mona Das and Man­ka Dhin­gra for their pas­sion­ate and elo­quent floor speech­es in sup­port of the bill today.