Washington Senate panel approves bill to make drug possession gross misdemeanor
The Legislature is moving forward with a proposal to fix the state’s drug possession laws after a Senate panel on Thursday approved a bill with a larger focus on treating addiction. The bill has 15 co-sponsors, including Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane. “What has been really fascinating when trying to deal with the Blake issue is really the fact that everyone is coming to this work with the intention of getting people treatment and helping them on their journey to recovery,” said Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, chair of the Law and Justice Committee. An amended bill that passed a Senate committee on Thursday would make possession a gross misdemeanor and incorporate the treatment options recommended by the Substance Use Recovery Services Advisory Committee, a bipartisan committee that has met over the last two years to discuss the state’s drug possession law. Continue reading at Spokesman Review. (Jim Camden)

WA Democrats claim some Republicans privately support — but may not vote for — abortion protections
Washington state Democrats want to add abortion rights to the state’s Constitution, but they need Republican votes to make that happen. A resolution to amend the state Constitution is currently winding its way through committees in Olympia. The resolution would need to win a two-thirds vote in both the state Senate and House before it can be put on a ballot for voters. The problem for Democrats is, they don’t have that two-thirds vote in either body in Olympia. But some lawmakers told KUOW they still have hope for Senate and House joint resolution bills, claiming that a few Republicans privately back abortion rights and might be convinced to vote with Democrats, eventually. “We’ll see what happens. It takes time to build pressure. It takes time to build attention,” Keiser said. Continue reading at KUOW. (NW News Network)

Students of color are now the majority in WA public schools
For the first time ever, kids of color make up the majority of students enrolled in Washington public schools. It’s a slim majority, at 50.6%, but the growth in recent years has been rapid. Between 2009 and 2022, the percentage of kids identifying as a race other than white increased by nearly 50%. The milestone was always inevitable; it’s just a question of timing. National estimates say that net U.S. population growth in the past several years has been from people of color, and public schools are generally more racially diverse than the adult population. Washington state’s total population is around 66% white. But the pandemic may have tipped the scale here. Kids of color weren’t the majority until last fall, according to state data. In 2020, they were still in the minority. The number is yet another sign that public schools are undergoing a major shift — and not just in the parts of the state where students of color make up the majority, such as in the Seattle area. Almost every school district in the state has seen its share of students of color zoom up. In a system that has long been criticized as being modeled on what works for a middle-class white kid, white kids are no longer the most common customer. Continue reading at Seattle Times.