Kohl-Welles bill offers clarity for Department of Health

OLYMPIA – The Department of Health currently is caught in a statutory Catch-22, in which the department is forced by state law to apply for federal grants that it is ineligible to receive under federal law. Senate Bill 6305, sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, and passed by the Senate on Feb. 18 with a 37-11 vote, would fix the current dilemma.

“The Department needs flexibility. This isn’t about mandating any one brand of curriculum, it’s about making sure that there’s enough flexibility to provide a comprehensive education for our students,” said Kohl-Welles.

SB 6305 addresses the issue the Department of Health faced after the Legislature passed a new law last year requiring medically accurate sexual education curriculum for Washington students. The new curriculum didn’t correlate to the federal government’s requirements for abstinence-only education and the corresponding grants for which the department was required to apply.

“This bill will give flexibility. If the federal rules change, then this bill would still apply,” said Kohl-Welles. “This bill will get the department out of the Catch-22 situation.”

With the passage of SB 6305, the Department of Health will have the flexibility to decide for which grants it should apply, increasing efficiency for the grant process.

Now that SB 6305 has passed the Senate, it moves on to the House, where it will be heard in a public hearing in the House Committee on Health Care & Wellness, tomorrow Feb. 20th at 8:00 a.m. In order to become law, the bill must pass the House by the March 7th cut-off deadline.

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