The Federal Way Public Schools board voted to join 100 other schools in Washington state in their request for Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or No Child Left Behind Act as it is called today, by the end of the next legislative session.

Resolution 2014-18 ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) Reauthorization Request was unanimously passed on Tuesday evening at the board’s meeting.

“No school has met 100 percent by [2014] that was established in 2001,” said board Vice President Geoffery McAnalloy. “I think we do need to raise our voices up because when you come and you work as hard as the schools are working, the building administrators and teachers are working to make our children successful, and you get told you’re a failing school, it really does hurt the camaraderie and the feelings. We need to start looking at it and we need to send a message to Congress that this is broken and we need to bring something forward to [fix] it.”

Federal Way Public Schools is among the approximate 295 public school districts in Washington state that are labeled as “failing” by the law’s high standards.

Congress adopted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 to “provide equal access to a free public education based upon high academic standards for all children, regardless of ethnicity or financial economic status,” the resolution states.

But Congress passed a new version (No Child Left Behind) in 2001, which mandates certain requirements, such as that each school pass 37 or so categories in the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements.

“If a school falls short in even one category, the school is classified as failing,” the resolution states. “Washington has continued to receive national recognition for progress in multiple areas …”

Some of those areas include remaining above the national average for fourth-grade math and reading scores and achieving the highest-ever extended graduation rate; 80 percent of Washington students are now earning their high school diploma.

According to the Washington State School Directors Association, the association that drafted the Federal Way Public Schools’ resolution, Washington school districts lost the waiver from No Child Left Behind Act this year because the state Legislature failed to impose state test scores as a consideration for teacher evaluation for tested grades and subjects in 2012.

When the state Legislature did not make the change to the Washington Teacher Principal Evaluation law in the 2014 legislative session, the U.S. Department of Education pulled the waiver, which cost the state $40 million in Title I funding for disadvantaged students and $19 million to pay for teacher training.

And each school that did not meet those requirements had to send out the infamous letter explaining they were a “failing school.”

“It most certainly exposed the problem we have in serving all kids,” said Deputy Superintendent Mark Davidson at the board meeting. “There’s no doubt about that looking at the various groups, sub groups, it was clear.”

Davidson said while they needed that “slap in the face” to tell folks they have not met kids’ needs, he said each state test is so different from another that calling Washington schools a failure is unfair.

“It’s not an equal playing field,” he said, noting the official state test has changed at least three times in recent years. “… It’s time for Congress to step up and reauthorize this in a way that’s appropriate for helping get all kids to the graduation day. That’s really what it’s about.”

However, in board member Claire Wilson’s legislative update, she said federal public officials have indicated the reauthorization may not happen for “quite some time,” indicating it could be as long as two to three years after the 2016 presidential election.

“Things like that take time,” she said, adding that sequestration is likely to stick around until 2022 in a contentious bipartisan Congress.

Nonetheless, Wilson was optimistic public schools will continue to receive more funding from the state’s McCleary decision during the budget negotiations set to take place this next 2015 legislative session.

For more information on Federal Way Public Schools, visit www.fwps.org.