State Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, says a provision included in a proposed supplemental operating budget from the state House of Representatives would cut funding for the Running Start program.
Walsh, in a news release sent out on Tuesday, said a provision in the proposed budget would set a new limit on higher education dual-enrollment for the state's high school students. According to Walsh, the new limit is equivalent to a $14 million cut in financial support for early higher education.
The change included in the House operating budget sets a new limit on the amount of classes a Washington state Running Start student can be enrolled in at one time. The state measures enrollment with a statistic called full-time equivalent, or FTE. The state uses the same term when measuring the cost per year of a full-time employee, but the one used for measuring student enrollment is separate and not linked to the yearly cost of a full-time employee.
In the past, and this 2025-2026 school year, the state allows Running Start students to have up to 1.4 FTE worth of courses between standard high school classes and higher education courses. But the new provision in the House proposed supplemental operating budget reduces that limit to 1.2 FTE.
According to a fact sheet released by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1 FTE for high school courses equals 27 hours and 45 minutes of part time enrollment while 1 FTE for college level courses is equal to 15 enrolled college credits. When enrolling for courses, students must be sure that their total full-time enrollment does not exceed a certain limit, which, in the proposed supplemental budget, will drop to 1.2 in the 2026-2027 school year.
The new rule effectively reduces the amount of course work a Running Start student can participate in each year.
In his statement on Tuesday, Walsh labeled the provision “blatantly anti-student” and claimed that the provision is a “tuition hike in disguise” to help the state balance the budget.
“The majority has spent years burning through taxpayer cash on bloated projects,” Walsh said. “And now they’re asking for 16- and 17-year-olds to pick up the tab.”
In the same statement, Walsh argued that the cut is an attack specifically on rural Washington and communities in his district, such as Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Castle Rock, with school districts that cannot afford to provide their own college-level courses having the most to lose.
"Programs like Running Start are the gold standard for social mobility in Washington," Walsh said. "If the majority is looking for 'savings,' they should look at their own wasteful bureaucracies, not the classrooms of Grays Harbor and Lower Columbia College.”
