Stop the Closure of Our Community Colleges
While both the House and Senate budgets include our contract funding, the House budget contains an unfortunate provision that starts the process of closing one of our state’s community or technical colleges.
In the House budget, there is a proviso that directs the SBCTC to make a recommendation eliminating at least one community or technical college. The SBCTC would have to make that recommendation to the governor’s office and the legislature by November 1 of this year. While we don’t know which colleges are under threat, the proviso encourages the state board to look at those in close geographic proximity to other schools, and that could mean Bellevue.
Closing a community college is a terrible idea: it won’t do anything to educate students or solve the state’s current budget shortfall. Instead, it will hurt the diverse student population that our colleges serve, not to mention eliminating the jobs of hardworking staff and faculty.
Please contact lawmakers RIGHT NOW and tell them to remove this proviso (Section 602, subsection 44)
We’re targeting key lawmakers in this campaign: your local representatives Janice Zahn, and My-Linh Thai, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, and Representative Timm Ormsby, chair of Appropriations.
Janice Zahn – Janice.Zahn@leg.wa.gov
My-Linh Thai – my-linh.thai@leg.wa.gov
You can use the message we provided in the links below, or write your own (please remember to be polite and respectful). Contact Your LegislatorContact Timm Ormsby
Seamus Petrie
Legislative & Organizing Director
