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ANALYSIS · PROCESS

Kirkland's Council Is Weighing a Position on Two School Initiatives

Our reading of the public record. The facts are sourced, and the conclusions are ours. About our labels

Tacoma, Shoreline, and Seattle already have. Issaquah votes September 22. Kirkland’s own files hold two precedents that point different ways, and one habit the council has kept every time we could find: a public hearing first.

In short

  • On September 15, during end-of-meeting calendar updates, Mayor Kelli Curtis asked the City Manager to bring back “potential action for council to take a position” on the two school initiatives on the November ballot. She said community members had asked. The Mayor and Councilmember Amy Falcone are both listed endorsers of the campaign opposing the measures. The discussion is set for the council’s October 20 meeting, six days after King County mails ballots.

  • Kirkland would be joining a line that is already moving: Tacoma adopted an opposing resolution July 28, Shoreline on August 17, Seattle on September 15, and Issaquah holds a public hearing September 22.

  • Kirkland’s council has taken a formal position on a ballot measure at eight meetings since 2006, twelve resolutions in all: six statewide initiatives, three school district measures, a county levy, a hospital levy, and its own parks levy. Every one came after a noticed public hearing. Each statewide position named something the city runs or pays for. The council has also passed six resolutions on inclusion, one of them supporting state and federal legislation.

What Happened September 15

The September 15 council meeting was nearly over. Utility rates had taken most of the night, and the agenda had reached calendar updates, the short stretch at the end where councilmembers flag upcoming items.

Mayor Kelli Curtis used hers to ask the City Manager to bring back “potential action for council to take a position” on IL26-638 and IL26-001, the two school measures on the November 3 ballot. She said the council had received “a number of requests from community members.” She asked whether anyone objected to taking it up as a future discussion. No one did, and the council went into executive session a few minutes later.

The calendar update is where Kirkland’s council policies say a councilmember should raise new business, so the channel was the normal one. The form was different from the last three times. In 2023, 2024 and 2025, the request to bring back a ballot position came as a motion, seconded and voted, and in 2023 it drew a no vote. This time there was no motion. She referred to the two measures by the names their sponsors use, “protecting girls sports” and “restoring parents rights.”

The Mayor is listed as an endorser of No Hate in WA State, the campaign working to defeat both measures, on the campaign’s own endorsement page. So is Councilmember Amy Falcone.

The clip runs 51 seconds and is embedded above.

What the Two Measures Do

Both campaigns describe these measures very differently, so what follows is the Attorney General’s official ballot language and the filed text, not either side’s summary.

IL26-638 “concerns participation in athletics at K-12 schools.” The Attorney General’s description: it “would prohibit students it defines as ‘biologically male’ from competing in certain school athletic activities intended for female students only. It would require verification of biological sex by students’ healthcare providers.” The filed text adds that a student who elects to play in a female-only competition must provide, as part of the routine sports physical already required, a statement signed by their own healthcare provider verifying biological sex, based only on reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.

Whether that means new testing is contested. The measure’s findings say the existing physical already documents a student’s sex assigned at birth and call that a reliable basis, so the sponsors’ position is that nothing new is needed. Opponents, including the state PTA and the teachers’ union, note that the operative section lets a provider rely only on anatomy, genetics or hormone levels, which leaves out the birth documentation the findings point to, and that the requirement falls only on students entering girls’ competitions.

IL26-001 “concerns parental rights relating to their children in public school.” The Attorney General’s description: it “would repeal amendments to a statute listing certain rights of parents and guardians of public-school children and re-enact the law as it was originally enacted by Initiative to the Legislature 2081.” The Legislature passed I-2081 in 2024 with bipartisan support and amended it in 2025 through House Bill 1296. A yes vote restores the 2024 version, re-enacting rights to review materials and student records and to receive certain notifications, and repealing rights HB 1296 added, among them a right to file harassment and bullying complaints and to annual notice of language access services.

Both operate inside public schools. Kirkland runs none. Lake Washington School District is a separate government with its own elected board.

Who Else Is Doing This, and Who Asked Them

Kirkland would be joining something already moving.

The Tacoma City Council adopted Resolution 41972 on July 28. The city’s announcement says the vote was unanimous; the legislative record posts no tally. The Shoreline City Council adopted Resolution 567 on August 17. The Seattle City Council adopted its own resolution on September 15, the same night Mayor Curtis made her request in Kirkland; seven councilmembers voted yes and two were absent. The Issaquah City Council has noticed a public hearing for its regular meeting on September 22 to consider doing the same. Issaquah hasn’t voted as of September 21.

The wording of these measures makes the direction easy to read backwards, so plainly: opposing them means urging a no vote. A council opposing IL26-638 wants current athletic eligibility rules kept rather than the measure’s restriction. A council opposing IL26-001 wants the Legislature’s 2025 version of the parental-rights law kept instead of the 2024 original. Tacoma, Shoreline, and Seattle went that way on both.

Every city resolution we found runs in that one direction, and there’s an organized campaign behind it. No Hate in WA State, a coalition that includes the state teachers’ union, the state PTA and the League of Women Voters, is working to defeat both measures. As of September 21, its public endorsement list names more than 180 elected officials and candidates. Among them are the primary sponsor of Tacoma’s resolution, Councilmember Olgy Diaz; two Issaquah councilmembers, ahead of Tuesday’s hearing; one Shoreline councilmember; and five members of the Redmond City Council, including its president. We found no comparable effort asking councils to pass resolutions in support.

None of that is improper. Elected officials endorse campaigns, and campaigns ask friendly councils for resolutions. It does answer the question of how these resolutions are reaching council agendas, and it’s worth knowing before Kirkland’s does.

The two councils that acted first gave different reasons. Tacoma’s resolution is almost entirely about what the measures would do to children: school records handed to parents under investigation for abuse, students discouraged from seeking help from counselors, girls facing medical sex certification. Its only Tacoma-specific clause says residents asked the council to oppose them. It claims no city authority over any of it.

Shoreline’s resolution cites two resolutions the city had already adopted, No. 401 in 2017 declaring Shoreline inviting, equitable and safe for all, and No. 542 affirming the same for LGBTQIA2+ people, and concludes that IL26-638 “undermines the City’s commitment” set out in them. Shoreline also moved quickly. The resolution says the council considered the initiatives and gave the required equal opportunity for opposing views at the same August 17 meeting where it adopted them.

What State Law Actually Requires

A Washington city council may take a collective position on a ballot measure. The rule now lives in RCW 29B.45.010; Kirkland’s own resolutions have cited the same statute under its two earlier numbers, RCW 42.17.130 and then RCW 42.17A.555. Two conditions apply. Any required notice of the meeting has to carry the title and number of the ballot proposition, and councilmembers or members of the public have to get an approximately equal opportunity to express an opposing view.

That’s the whole protection. It isn’t a public hearing, and it doesn’t require one. Issaquah chose to hold a hearing. Shoreline handled it as a discussion item and adopted it the same night. Either satisfies the statute.

Kirkland’s Record, Part One: Telling Voters How to Vote

The council has taken a formal position on a ballot measure at eight meetings since 2006 that we could find, twelve resolutions in all. Six were on statewide initiatives. The rest were local: three Lake Washington School District levies and a bond in 2013, a King County crisis care levy in 2023, the EvergreenHealth levy this past July, and Kirkland’s own parks levy in 2023.

Start with the statewide six, since that’s the closest match. In 2006 the council opposed I-933 (Resolution R-4602), which the resolution says “would deprive local jurisdictions, including the City of Kirkland, of the ability to adopt and enforce reasonable land use development standards.” In 2008 it opposed I-985 (R-4728), which would have taken about $622.6 million from state and local transportation funds; that resolution also records that the Suburban Cities Association, at the request of 28 member cities, had voted to oppose the measure, so Kirkland was acting alongside its neighbors. In 2009 it opposed I-1033 (R-4775), and that resolution says the measure “would remove money from the City of Kirkland general fund” during a projected shortfall. In 2019 it opposed I-976 (R-5389), naming local projects at risk, including Safe Routes to School at Lakeview and Peter Kirk Elementary and the NE 132nd Street sidewalk improvements.

In September 2024 it opposed two more in one night. I-2117 would have repealed the Climate Commitment Act (R-5642), and I-2066 concerned natural gas (R-5643). Both resolutions tie the measures to the city’s own Sustainability Strategic Plan, and the second says I-2066 would bar local governments from discouraging gas use. Both passed 7-0. That same fall the council looked at the other two initiatives on the ballot, I-2109 and I-2124, and took no position on either. Councilmember Neal Black, who brought the 2117 motion, told his colleagues the council “needs to be judicious about if and when it states a collective position on a ballot measure,” that it “should be rare,” and that 2117 cleared “a high threshold” because of the city’s adopted plans and the funding at stake.

Land use, transportation dollars, the general fund, sidewalks, the city’s climate plan. Each statewide position named something the city runs or pays for, in the resolution itself.

The local ones are a different case, and a fair reading has to include them. In 2013 the council urged a yes vote on three school district measures. Kirkland doesn’t run schools. The resolutions tie the levies to “the quality of life enjoyed by Kirkland residents” and to what Kirkland households would pay. The hospital levy last July drew the only recent no vote, and it came on this exact point. Councilmember Black said he was being asked to tell voters “how they should vote on a tax measure that is not a city measure,” and voted no while saying he supported the levy itself.

Then there’s the thing all twelve share. Every one was adopted at a noticed public hearing. Three of the early resolutions say so in their text. The 2019 one doesn’t, but the October 1, 2019 agenda lists it under Public Hearings all the same. The 2024 resolutions go further and recite the state statute by section. State law doesn’t require a hearing. In every case we found, Kirkland held one anyway.

Kirkland’s Record, Part Two: Saying What Kirkland Will Be

There’s a second record, and the city keeps it on its own website.

Under the heading “The City’s Commitment,” Kirkland lists a series of council actions on equity and inclusion. Resolution R-5240 (2017) declares Kirkland a safe, inclusive and welcoming city for all people. Resolution R-5434 (2020) commits the city to examining and dismantling racism. Resolution R-5548 (2022) adopts a five-year Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging roadmap. Resolution R-5686 (2025) declares Kirkland a welcoming, inclusive and safe city for 2SLGBTQIA+ people and says the city “does not tolerate homophobic and transphobic violence.” An ordinance from 2001 added sexual orientation to the city’s affirmative action policy.

One of them reaches past city operations by its own title. Resolution R-5550 (2022) affirms the city’s support of comprehensive reproductive healthcare including abortion, of marriage equality, and “of protections through Washington State and federal legislative action.” Kirkland administers none of that.

These are closely comparable to the two resolutions Shoreline pointed to when it acted, and the most recent is from last year.

Which Precedent Governs

The record supports both answers, and the council will have to pick one.

A councilmember arguing these two measures are different in kind has the ballot-measure record. Every statewide position defended something the city runs or pays for. The council has backed local school and hospital measures it doesn’t run, but those were tax measures on Kirkland households, the resolutions said so, and the one recent no vote was cast on exactly that ground. These two measures operate inside schools Kirkland doesn’t administer and don’t touch a Kirkland budget line, and whichever way the vote goes, permits still get reviewed and the budget still has to balance. On that reading, a position changes nothing the city does and puts city hall on one side of a question its own residents answer differently. There’s also a distinction between the two records themselves: the commitments resolutions say what Kirkland will be, while the ballot-measure resolutions tell voters how to mark a ballot, which is why a specific statute governs that act and not the other.

A councilmember arguing the opposite has the commitments record, and Shoreline’s example for how to use it. Kirkland has said repeatedly, most recently in 2025, that it intends to be a safe and welcoming city for the people these measures concern, and in 2022 it went further and backed state and federal legislation. On that reading, declining to speak now is the departure, not speaking.

Both readings come from Kirkland’s own documents. Which one counts as the precedent is a judgment, and it’s the council’s to make.

A Fair Version of This

Whichever way council decides, its own files describe how it has done this before.

When we covered the September 15 meeting, we argued council should hold the line its ballot-measure record drew. Then we read the whole record for this piece, and it turned out to be less tidy than we made it sound. The commitments resolutions are precedent too, and a fair account has to say so. So our view now is limited to process, and it’s two things. First, hold a noticed public hearing, the way the council has every time we could find, from 2006 through the hospital levy last July. In 2024 it went a step further: three councilmembers screened all four initiatives first, the full council voted to schedule the hearing two weeks out, and staff was asked to check in with the campaigns on both sides. None of that is required by statute, which is exactly why doing it means something. A hearing is where the residents who disagree with a resolution get heard by the people voting on it, rather than about it. Shoreline’s same-night adoption is the version to avoid. Second, councilmembers who have personally endorsed the campaign should say so on the record before the vote. There’s a Kirkland model for this too. At the hospital levy hearing in July 2025, Mayor Curtis said from the dais, “I plan to personally support and endorse this levy,” before the council voted. Nothing requires recusal, and nothing here calls for it. That sentence, in the minutes, is enough.

Neither of those asks depends on what you think of the measures, or on whether you think council should weigh in at all.

What Happens Next

This is now scheduled. The city’s agenda calendar, updated September 18, lists two items for the October 20 regular meeting: “Expressing a Position on Initiative I-638” and “Expressing a Position on Initiative I-001.” King County mails ballots October 14, so as scheduled, council would be taking its position after voters have ballots in hand. The council’s own recent practice has been a scheduling vote followed by a public hearing about two weeks later, and in 2024 Councilmember Amy Falcone said she wanted any position taken “before ballots are in the mail.” By the council’s own standards, that points to a noticed hearing on October 6, or at a special meeting before the 14th, or to letting the moment pass.

The address for written comment is CityCouncil@KirklandWA.gov. Two sentences is plenty, and it carries further before a resolution is drafted than after.

If you want the council to take a position, say so. If you’d rather it leave statewide school measures to the voters, say that. And either way, ask for the hearing, the timing that puts it before ballots go out, and the disclosure. The decision is close enough that the council’s own files argue with each other, which is usually the point at which it helps to hear from the people who live here.

Sources & city records

Last updated: September 2026.

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