Using our Power to Transform our Education System
Hear the stories of Diana and Shereese, two OneAmerica leaders, who are organizing in their communities to transform Washington State’s education system.
Education &
Early Learning
Building an Equitable Education System Together
We work to create a pre-k to college education system that values multilingualism, honors and respects our cultures, and where families have meaningful and inclusive access to opportunities to thrive.
We work with students, families, and in coalition to advocate for affordable and culturally relevant childcare and early learning programs where early learning providers are valued. We advocate to expand dual language classrooms and to ensure immigrants like us are making key decisions about our schools, serving in leadership and on school boards.
Early Learning
Our vision is an early learning system that works for everyone – for our children, our families and workers like us. We are fighting for more public investments to support affordable childcare that expands options for bilingual preschool programs and for living wages for childcare providers. We recognize that quality childcare programs come from supporting a network of multilingual early learning programs across the state that reflect the families in our communities.
Early Learning: How We’ve Won
In 2021, we passed Fairstart for Kids, the largest investment in child care and early learning in WA state’s history. This bill strengthened and expanded access to culturally appropriate, multi-lingual, high quality child care and early learning opportunities.a
Language Access and Family Engagement
Our vision is an education system that includes us all no matter what language we speak, and makes sure families have meaningful access to be a part of their child’s education. Funding and implementing strong language access supports, including interpretation and translation, is critical for parents to be key participants in their child’s education and in our schools.
Language Access: How We’ve Won
In 2022, we passed a bill that expanded Language Access supports in K-12 schools, ensuring all families can meaningfully and equitably take part in their child’s education.
Multilingual Education
We believe all languages and cultures matter and that students and families have better outcomes when their heritage language and culture is supported and developed at a young age. We work to expand dual language classrooms, where students learn in English and another language at the same time, to support multilingualism for all. We support teacher pipeline programs to expand dual language classrooms and make sure our teachers reflect our communities as well as other innovative models, such as teaching heritage language in school and after school programs to advance multilingualism.
Multilingual Education: How We’ve Won
In 2020, we expanded our funding for dual language programs. We won over $240,000 in dual language education grants for childcare and early learning classrooms and over 1 million in dual language K-12 grants, including heritage and indigenous languages.
