OLYMPIA — A bill requiring students to graduate with a financial literacy class ultimately failed by the time the Washington Legislature closed its 2024 session this week.
The bill drastically changed on the Senate floor on Feb. 29, when Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island, introduced an amendment that removed the graduation requirement.
"The graduation requirement piece is basically what the bill was designed to do, so by taking that out, it wouldn't do anything," Rep. Skyler Rude, R-Walla Walla, primary sponsor of House Bill 1915, said in a recent interview.
The House unanimously passed a version of the bill on Feb. 8 that made the course a requirement for high school students set to graduate in 2031. According to a 2021 study by FINRA Investor Education Foundation, 47% of adults do not have money set aside for unexpected expenses.
When the bill reached the Senate floor on Feb. 29, Wellman removed the graduation requirement and changed it to require the course be offered in every district by the 2027-28 school year. She thought it would be better for these courses to be offered as a prerequisite in every school before making it a graduation requirement.
"I didn't want to throw this at the schools this year and say: Here's a graduation requirement," Wellman said.
Current law requires schools to provide students with financial education, but students aren't required to take these classes.
On Feb. 12, the bill passed through the Senate's education committee, on which Wellman serves as chair. She said she didn't introduce the amendment earlier in the process because there wasn't enough time.
The amendment was adopted on the floor and the bill passed the Senate with a vote of 47-1, with Sen. Phil Fortunato, R-Auburn, being the only "no" vote.
Rude says he wouldn't be able to support the bill if the graduation requirement is removed.
According to Rude, House Democrats and Republicans, with more than 55 initial sponsors, and Senate Republicans were all aligned with making financial education a graduation requirement, and Rude said Senate Democrats were the only caucus raising concerns.
"I'm hoping there's a pathway for us to still pursue the graduation requirements," Rude said.
