AN ACT Relating to providing mentors to novice nurses in the beginning educator support team program;
Summary
HB 1352 expands Washington’s beginning educator support team program to explicitly include novice school nurses as eligible participants. The bill defines a novice school nurse as a registered nurse or advanced registered nurse practitioner in the first, second, or third year in a school-based role, and requires districts receiving program funds to prioritize providing each novice school nurse with a trained and qualified mentor. The bill also makes clear that the program’s existing supports for beginning principals, educational staff associates, teachers, and alternative-route candidates can be used to support novice nurses as well.
The bill preserves the program’s broader structure, including paid orientation, individualized assistance, ongoing professional development, release time for mentors and participants, non-evaluative observations, feedback, and program evaluation. It also allows funds to be used for statewide or regional coordination through the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), and it continues to emphasize research-based induction standards and support for underrepresented populations. In addition, the bill directs OSPI to notify districts about the program and encourage applications for funding.
Impact
HB 1352 amends RCW provisions governing the beginning educator support team program to add novice school nurses as a specifically protected and prioritized group for mentoring and induction support. It requires school districts that receive program funding to provide a trained mentor to novice school nurses and integrates them into the program’s existing professional development and coaching framework. The bill does not create a separate nursing program; instead, it extends an existing educator-support funding and mentoring structure to school nurses in their first three years of school-based employment.
Sentiment
The bill appears broadly supportive and noncontroversial in concept, based on its straightforward purpose of improving onboarding and retention for novice school nurses through mentoring. The available record does not include committee testimony or recorded votes, so there is no documented opposition or amendment debate in the provided materials. The bill’s tone and structure suggest a workforce-support measure aimed at strengthening school health services and early-career retention.
Contention
No specific points of contention are documented in the provided committee or voting history. Potential areas of policy interest, based on the text, could include how districts would fund the added mentoring requirement, whether OSPI appropriations would be sufficient, and how districts would identify qualified mentors for school nurses versus classroom educators. The bill also prioritizes districts with high numbers of beginning educators, which could raise questions about how novice nurses would be served when funding is limited, but no explicit opposition is shown in the record provided.
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