A longer version of this article appeared in the Washington State Standard.

Tana Senn, director of the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families, is asking for nearly $8 million to open a new 16-bed juvenile facility in Pierce County.

The request is among those state agencies have submitted in recent days to Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office as he prepares a budget proposal ahead of the 2026 legislative session. 

The new facility would be a medium-security detention center focused on serving young people with acute mental health needs. If granted funding, the agency would seek to buy an existing building, a shuttered treatment center near Parkland, in fiscal year 2027, with detainees potentially moving there in April 2027.

Of the $8 million, $3 million would go toward buying the property from nonprofit hospital system Multicare, the rest for operations. The department is also seeking $12 million to improve staffing at Green Hill and the state’s other juvenile detention facility, the Echo Glen Children’s Center in Snoqualmie. Officials also want money for security improvements at the two facilities. 

Then there’s the spike in child fatalities and near-fatalities in the child welfare system that the Department of Children, Youth and Families oversees. 

While lawmakers debate a recent state law’s role in that rise, Senn wants more money, $4 million to be exact, to address the issue. 

The money would go in part toward getting drug treatment for parents before their child welfare cases are closed. The highly potent opioid fentanyl has driven increases in fatalities and near-fatalities for the state’s children in recent years.

The funding would also look to help connect families to services after their cases close.

“Families need support in their communities to mitigate risk factors,” Senn wrote to Chapman-See. “Investing in increased community-based supports to better engage parents in substance-use disorder treatment, to create safe home environments for young children, and to more successfully connect families to services after a case is closed can mitigate risk and prevent tragedy.”

Overall, the agency is asking for 37 new full-time equivalent employees to improve staffing in the child welfare system.

The Washington State Standard originally published a longer version of this article on Sept. 17, 2025. Cascade PBS has edited it for length.

Delegates from the MLK Labor Council voted Wednesday evening to endorse both Mayor Bruce Harrell and challenger Katie Wilson in Seattle’s mayoral election. Before the primary, MLK Labor had given Harrell a sole endorsement in this year’s race.  

MLK Labor is King County’s central labor organization, representing more than 150 unions and 220,000 workers.  

Its endorsements — along with those of many of the large unions that make up its membership — are a stamp of approval for pro-labor politicians and typically go to the left-lane candidate in Seattle races.  

“MLK Labor is proud to update our endorsement in the Seattle mayoral race to support both Mayor Bruce Harrell and now, Katie Wilson,” said Katie Garrow, MLK Labor executive secretary-treasurer in a statement following the vote. “A dual endorsement by MLK Labor shows both candidates have earned meaningful support from working people and accurately reflects the views of union members across Seattle.”  

In 2021, labor threw its weight behind Harrell’s challenger, former Seattle City Councilmember M. Lorena González. This year, however, unions were quick to rally around Harrell.  

MLK Labor voted to endorse Harrell shortly after the candidate filing deadline in May. At the time, the organization cited Harrell’s work on pro-worker levies, his defense of Seattle’s minimum-wage laws and his willingness to stand up to “federal overreach when working people’s rights are at stake.”  

Harrell also netted early endorsements from SEIU 775, Seattle’s Building and Construction Trades Council, the Amalgamated Transit Union, IBEW, Teamsters and others.  

It gave Harrell’s reelection an air of inevitability. Wilson, a progressive political organizer running to Harrell’s left, faced a steep uphill fight without labor endorsements and, importantly, campaign donations.  

The tide shifted slightly in June when PROTEC 17, the largest union of city of Seattle employees, endorsed Wilson. She also picked up endorsements before the August primary from UAW Local 3121, which represents University of Washington graduate students, and the American Federation of Teachers Washington.  

Then Wilson won the primary by 9.5% and Harrell’s reelection no longer felt assured.  

Since then, she has picked up endorsements from UFCW 3000, which represents grocery and retail workers and is the largest private sector union in Washington, and from the service workers’ union SEIU 925.  

In its dual endorsement, MLK Labor cited Wilson’s work on initiatives to raise the minimum wage in south King County cities and her role in the crafting and passage of Seattle’s Jumpstart payroll tax on big businesses. It also cited Wilson’s endorsements from other large unions.   

MLK Labor delegates also voted Wednesday to endorse King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay in the King County Executive race; Sam Mendez for Burien City Council Position 3; Joe Van for Highline School Board Position 3; and Damarys Espinoza for Highline School Board Position 4. MLK Labor also endorsed passage of the Seattle Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy.

This article originally appeared on TVW News.

Washington’s top K-12 official is asking lawmakers to bankroll a statewide push to bring artificial intelligence tools and training into classrooms in 2026, even as new test data show slow, uneven academic recovery and persistent achievement gaps.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal told TVW’s Inside Olympia that he will request about $10 million in the upcoming supplemental budget for a statewide pilot program to purchase AI tutoring tools — beginning with math — and fund teacher training. He urged legislators to protect education from cuts, make structural changes to the tax code and act boldly rather than leaving local districts to fend for themselves. “If you’re not willing to make those changes, don’t take it out on kids,” Reykdal said.

The funding push comes as new Smarter Balanced assessment results show gradual improvement but highlight persistent inequities. State test scores have ticked upward, and student progress rates between grades are now mirroring pre-pandemic trends. Still, higher-poverty communities are not improving as quickly as more affluent peers. About 57% of eighth graders met foundational math progress benchmarks — better than most states, Reykdal noted, but still leaving four in 10 students short of university-ready standards by 10th grade.

Reykdal cautioned against reading too much into a single exam, emphasizing that Washington consistently ranks near the top among peer states. He argued that overall college-going rates among public school students show they are more prepared than the test suggests. “Don’t grade the workload — grade the thinking,” he said.

Artificial intelligence, Reykdal said, has moved beyond the margins and into the mainstream of daily teaching and learning: “AI is in the middle of everything, because students are making it in a big way. Teachers are doing it. We’re doing it in our everyday lives.”

OSPI has issued human-centered AI guidance and directed districts to update technology policies, clarifying how AI can be used responsibly and what constitutes academic dishonesty. Reykdal warned against long-term contracts with unproven vendors, but said larger platforms with stronger privacy practices will likely endure. He framed AI as a tool for expanding customized learning and preparing students for the labor market, while acknowledging the need to teach ethical use.

Reykdal pressed lawmakers to think more like executives anticipating global competition rather than waiting for perfect solutions. “If you wait until it’s perfect, it will be a decade from now, and the inequalities will be massive,” he said.

With test scores climbing slowly and AI transforming classrooms, Reykdal said the Legislature’s next steps will be decisive in shaping whether Washington narrows achievement gaps — or lets them widen.

TVW News originally published this article on Sept. 11, 2025.

Seattle residents could see expanded use of artificial intelligence in permitting, public safety, customer service and more as Mayor Bruce Harrell rolls out a new framework for how the city will incorporate the technology. 

In a Thursday news conference, Harrell announced a new 26-page AI plan that includes guidelines for training employees, evaluating the effectiveness of AI tools and expanding the use of AI to a variety of city operations. The new plan also comes with an updated version of Seattle’s AI policy for employees. 

“We are trying to be very intentional about positioning Seattle as a national leader in responsible artificial intelligence implementation,” Harrell said. 

Seattle will use AI to improve a variety of city services, Harrell said. Various AI pilots are already underway, including a partnership with software company CivCheck in an effort to speed permitting times, and a partnership with enterprise software provider C3.ai, Microsoft and the Seattle Department of Transportation on a project that uses AI to analyze near-miss car incidents and identify dangerous streets. 

Thursday’s press conference — which featured entrepreneurial jargon like “solutioning” and “upskilling” — was held at AI House, a co-working, event and “incubation” space on the Seattle waterfront launched through a public/private partnership earlier this year. The mayor addressed many of his comments to representatives from Seattle’s AI industry, stressing his desire to support the tech sector and harness local talent to help address civic issues.

“We have the second-biggest epicenter of AI talent, and our ability to activate that is key to our success,” said Seattle chief information officer Rob Lloyd. 

Seattle’s new AI plan alludes to “workforce transitions” and “organizational change” that will “inevitably create tensions” as the city’s embrace of AI “shifts the very nature of many jobs.” 

Asked what city jobs might be replaced by AI, Harrell said it’s “premature” to go into specifics. 

“When one door is closed in terms of a repetitive function, many more doors open for employment opportunity,” Harrell said, adding that the city will take a human-centered approach and work with labor groups “as we look at certain tasks that could possibly be replaced by AI.” 

Lloyd said the goal is to empower city employees — not to replace them. 

“People matter in making the most important decisions,” Lloyd said. “The critical decisions ultimately come back to the humans.” 

Seattle was one of the first cities in the country to adopt generative AI guidelines in 2023. The updated 2025 policy is similar: It says all AI outputs must be reviewed by humans for accuracy and bias. (The jargon the city uses is “HITL,” short for “human in the loop.”)

If significant amounts of text generated by AI are used in a final product, the policy requires attribution to the relevant AI system. Here’s what the city suggests as a sample disclosure line: 

“Some material in this brochure was generated using ChatGPT 4.0 and was reviewed for accuracy by a member of the Department of Human Services before publication.” 

Lloyd said there “aren’t any penalties per se” for employees who violate the policy’s rules around disclosure. 

Last month, Cascade PBS and KNKX published a two-part series about how city governments in Washington have used ChatGPT for a variety of policy and communication tasks. The series, based on thousands of pages of ChatGPT logs obtained through public records requests, was focused on Bellingham and Everett, but only because those cities were fastest to respond to records requests. Several Washington cities, including Seattle, are continuing to respond slowly in installments. 

Lloyd said Seattle’s embrace of AI comes with lots of guardrails. 

“There is a security process, there is privacy consideration, and as we go through that, we are also saying that we will enable AI to make the city of Seattle able to solve civic challenges,” Lloyd said. 

The city’s updated AI policy includes prohibitions on the use of AI for monitoring and classifying individuals based on their behavior, for autonomous weapons systems and for consequential decisions. 

This article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

Washington state Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu will retire from the bench at the end of this year.

Yu, appointed in 2014, told fellow justices Thursday afternoon after informing Gov. Bob Ferguson in a letter last week. 

Ferguson will name a new justice, his first appointment to the state Supreme Court. An election will be held next year to complete Yu’s term, which runs through Dec. 31, 2028.

“It is not an easy decision to step away,” she wrote in the letter. “I have had the good fortune of serving the people of our great state as a judge for 25 years and have cherished every single moment of such service.”

Yu highlighted the time she’s spent “mentoring and teaching those younger than me to embrace life, lead, and to make a difference.”

“They cherish the rule of law, and they will defend and protect the courts that I love so deeply,” she said.

Chief Justice Debra Stephens called Yu “a dynamic leader,” praising her work as a mentor of new lawyers and a champion of racial justice through her leadership on the Washington State Minority and Justice Commission.

“She has served the people of Washington with passion, intellect and boundless energy,” Stephens said in a statement.

Ferguson said in a statement that during her time on the bench, Yu has demonstrated her commitment to respect, dignity and fairness for all.” 

“Her legacy is in bending Washington state further toward justice,” he said.

Trailblazing career

Yu was raised in Bridgeport, a South Side neighborhood in Chicago, by immigrant parents. Her mother came from Mexico and her father from China. She is the first in her family to graduate from college, according to her official biography.

When Gov. Jay Inslee appointed her to the state Supreme Court on May 16, 2014, Yu became the first Asian, the first Latina and the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to serve on the court. She went on to win elections in 2014, 2016 and 2022.

Before reaching the state’s high court, the trailblazing Yu had etched her place into state history.

At midnight on Dec. 9, 2012, when same-sex couples could begin to legally marry in Washington state, several lined up outside a Seattle courtroom to have Yu, then a King County Superior Court judge, preside over their nuptials.

Sarah and Emily Cofer of Snohomish County were first up.

“Judge Yu was warm and welcoming. She presided over the ceremony with comfort and joy that made it feel like a personal event even in such a public setting,” Sarah Cofer recounted in a biography of Yu in the “Love, Equally” exhibit marking the history of marriage equality in Washington.

Yu worked more than 14 years as a trial court judge in King County Superior Court after serving as deputy chief of staff to former King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.

In her letter to Ferguson, Yu said personal events over the past year “have shed a new light on how I might want to spend the next 25 years of my life.”

Yu, in a phone interview Thursday, said two events catalyzed her decision. Last year, an early detection of breast cancer led to two surgeries and she is now “completely healthy.” Then, in March, Justice Susan Owens passed away at age 75, just three months after retiring from the bench.

“I thought, life just can’t end this way for me. I want to travel. I want to teach. I want to write,” she said. “Life is a precious gift.”

The Washington State Standard originally published this article on Sept. 11, 2025.

The U.S. Forest Service announced earlier this week that wildfire fighters can now voluntarily mask up against smoke, reversing a decades-long policy banning the use of respirators to reduce exposure to toxins and carcinogens.

According to new guidance the agency posted on Monday, the Forest Service will provide N95 respirators in the standard set of equipment for workers on a fireline – acknowledging that the masks can “provide some level of protection against exposure to particulates in smoke.” Prior to that, the agency had approved only bandanas for facial covering.  

The move comes after The New York Times spotlighted the acute health impacts of prolonged wildfire smoke exposure among firefighters – many of whom, the Times found, are “developing cancer or lung disease at young ages,” while some are dying. 

A 2023 Cascade PBS investigation outlined concerns from Washington wildland firefighters about increased exposure to toxins as more wildfires burned through residential structures. The investigation detailed the challenges of adapting respirators for the demands of the fireline and found that Washington had lagged behind California on efforts to implement new protections. 

While Washington officials had introduced rules in 2023 to broadly protect outdoor workers from smoke exposure, wildland firefighters remained exempt from those protections.

The Forest Service has still not approved N95 usage for what it calls “arduous work” – its reason being that no respirators are yet available that both filter out all inhalation hazards and follow regulations posed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

N95s are not recommended for use in confined spaces; in situations where workers are at risk of heat stress; or in the presence of oil mist or open flames. According to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times, the Forest Service is exploring the possibility of a mandatory mask program and expanding mask usage for arduous work.

A longer version of this article appeared in the Washington State Standard.

The conservative political group that has been trying to bolster parental rights in Washington schools will try again.

Let’s Go Washington on Monday announced it will begin gathering signatures for two new initiatives to the state Legislature. One, focused on parental rights, comes after a heated debate on the topic during this year’s legislative session in Olympia. Another looks to block transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports.

The group, led by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, will now need to collect 308,911 signatures by Jan. 2 to get the measures before lawmakers. Sponsors are advised to submit at least 386,000 signatures to allow room for error if some are ruled invalid.

Last year, legislators approved Let’s Go Washington’s Initiative 2081, which set new requirements for the information schools had to provide to parents. This year, Democratic lawmakers pushed through an overhaul of this “parental bill of rights,” upsetting supporters of the original measure.

The new law, House Bill 1296, took effect immediately upon Gov. Bob Ferguson’s signature in May.

The law removed parental access to student medical records. It also codified certain student rights and added new parental rights, including for parents to be notified of unexcused absences. 

The new Let’s Go Washington initiative, IL26-001, would repeal the changes House Bill 1296 made to the group’s earlier initiative. 

“We don’t co-parent with the government,” Heywood said in a statement. “No government employee can care about or love your child like you do.”

Let’s Go Washington’s second new initiative, IL26-638, would block transgender students from competing in girls’ sports. 

President Donald Trump has made this one of his top social issues. In March, the U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the Tumwater School District over allowing a transgender athlete from an opposing team to compete in a girls’ high school basketball game.

Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding to districts that allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ sports. Local school officials have said they’re in a bind: Either comply with state law and jeopardize federal funding, or follow Trump and risk punishment from the state.

If an initiative receives the required signatures, lawmakers have a few options. They can pass it as proposed, making it law. They can reject it, sending the measure to the ballot for voters to weigh in on at the next general election, which would be November 2026. Or they could pass an alternative to the proposed initiative, which would put both the original and revised versions on the ballot.

As written, both initiatives would face a steep uphill battle to win approval from the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which reconvenes in January for a 60-day session.

A coalition opposed to the initiatives has already launched a campaign against them, dubbed Washington Families for Freedom.

The group said in a statement on Monday that the initiatives would violate students’ privacy, including with “forced invasive medical exams,” increase bullying and decrease access to counseling, and undo a “successful sports inclusion policy that has worked since 2007.”

In 2024, Let’s Go Washington gathered enough signatures to send six initiatives to the Legislature. Lawmakers approved three, including Initiative 2081, and sent three others to voters, who turned them down. The group also supported Initiative 2066 focused on slowing the state’s shift away from natural gas, which voters passed but is now tied up in court.

As with that previous slate, Let’s Go Washington expects to spend millions of dollars on this campaign.

The Washington State Standard published a longer version of this story on Sept. 8, 2025. Cascade PBS has edited this story for length.

The Washington Secretary of State’s Office is funding memberships for all counties to join a multistate election-security program after federal money for election cybersecurity was cut, the Secretary of State Office announced Tuesday.

All 39 counties will be members of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a nonprofit that provides cybersecurity threat prevention and response support to 18,000 government organizations across the country.

Membership in the organization includes access to cyberthreat intelligence, incident response support and real-time information sharing, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said the membership will ensure that all counties have access to cybersecurity services.

“Protecting election security at the local level where our elections are conducted is one of our top priorities as an office,” Hobbs said.

The Department of Homeland Security cut funding to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which provided election-specific cybersecurity support to election offices across the country.

Those cuts especially hurt rural counties that are underserved by cybersecurity support, according to Hobbs’ office. Fifteen of Washington’s 39 counties are considered “cyber-underserved,” according to his Office, and joining the multistate organization will help improve their capabilities.

The office also announced that in the coming months it will replace existing Albert sensors with updated devices. These sensors are intrusion detection systems that can alert local governments of bad actors or malicious activity in their networks.

This article originally appeared in the Yakima Herald-Republic.

Water shutoffs are happening earlier than usual for some irrigators in the Yakima River Basin.

Reservoir levels are at the lowest seen since 1971. Non-senior water rights holders in the Yakima basin are expected to receive 40% of their allotment this year, an estimate that has held since August’s meeting, according to a release from the Bureau of Reclamation. Senior water rights holders will continue to receive full allotment. 

Storage in the reservoirs on Sept. 1 was 20% full with 218,000 acre-feet of water, or 44% of average. 

The Yakima Basin has been in a drought since 2023.

A decline in snowpack and early meltoff, especially this past winter, have led to current conditions. Sometimes called the “sixth reservoir,” snowpack makes up the difference in water supply and allotments. Reclamation’s Yakima Project has about a million acre-feet in storage, but about 2.5 million acre-feet in water rights are allocated in the basin. 

Scott Revell, manager of the Roza Irrigation District, estimates deliveries will end on Sept. 23, about a month earlier than usual. 

“It’s better than it could have been. I’m glad that the percentage didn’t drop further,” Revell said. 

There wasn’t enough precipitation to help the storage situation this year. April through July rain was a little less than half of average, Revell said, adding, “It’s been terrible.”

The early shutoff has implications for the late-harvest crops of the Roza. About two-thirds of the district’s crops, such as apples and wine grapes, are harvested after Sept. 15. 

Growers like to “put the crop to bed wet” because a plant’s cold tolerance is diminished when dry, he said. Not having late season water is already a disadvantage for the following growing year. 

But Revell looks at bright spots in challenging years like this one, such as the conservation efforts taken and the strong relationship the district has with the Bureau of Reclamation. 

The Bureau of Reclamation saw staff cuts at the start of the year, but “They did a really good job keeping everybody up to speed,” Revell said, including giving mid-month updates so that districts can adjust and plan accordingly. “Our communications with the Bureau are very strong.”

The Kittitas Reclamation District shut off on Aug. 13, about two months early, because of the lack of water. The Ellensburg-based district supplies water for hay and tree-fruit growers. 

District Manager Urban Eberhart said that the year was “tremendously difficult” for the district’s growers. 

The Kittitas Reclamation District and Roza Irrigation District are working with state agencies and Washington State University on a study to better understand the impact on production and crop quality of multiyear droughts, Eberhart said. 

Questen Inghram is a WSU Murrow News Fellow who writes for the Yakima Herald-Republic, which published this story on Sept. 5, 2025.

Washington residents will be able to access the updated COVID-19 vaccines without an individual prescription under a new standing order the state Department of Health issued Thursday. The order follows the federal approval of certain COVID-19 vaccines only for those with certain risk factors.

Under the order, most residents will be able to get the updated forms of COVID-19 vaccines at a Washington pharmacy or clinic without a prescription. The DOH says the vaccine is covered by most private insurers, Apple Health, and Washington’s Adult Vaccine and Childhood Vaccine Programs, though it is not free for everyone.

The DOH recommends that everyone 6 months and older, including pregnant people, stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccinations to protect against severe illness, hospitalization or death. The agency’s recommendation aligns with guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

The standing order, which is a prescription for the vaccines at pharmacies and clinics from the public health agency, follows an announcement earlier in the week that the state would join. The formation of the Alliance, which will also include Hawaii, followed the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez after she refused to approve vaccine policies pushed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic. Kennedy also recently replaced the entire CDC vaccine advisory committee with his own picks. The new committee has not yet made a national recommendation on the updated COVID vaccines.

“Washington State will not compromise when it comes to our values: science drives our public health policy,” said Dennis Worsham, Washington State Secretary of Health, in a news release. “Our commitment is to the health and safety of our communities, protecting lives through prevention, and not yielding to unsubstantiated theories that dismiss decades of proven public health practice.”