Seattle City Council president and District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth is proposing slicing back some key initiatives backed by Mayor Katie Wilson in the spending plan $1.3 billion voter-approved Families and Education levy.
Wednesday, Hollingsworth introduced a series of proposed amendments and cutbacks to the levy implementation plan, prioritizing food security for public school students as the council president said the city might need to prepare for rapid fallout from challenges to the state’s new Millionaire’s Tax. Hollingsworth said a more conservative approach to spending would give the city time to see if the state-level tax base survives the courts and the ballot box.
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Under the package of proposed changes, a proposal co-sponsored with Councilmember Dionne Foster would temporarily pause the rollout of a preschool voucher pilot championed by Wilson. By shifting the pilot’s first year into a planning phase, the proposed modification would redirect an additional $927,710 to food assistance administered by school personnel.
Hollingsworth is also seeking to reallocate millions in funding toward weekend and school break food vouchers with an amendment to postpone implementation of a new Universal School Meals Program until the 2027–2028 school year, freeing up $3 million for targeted holiday and weekend food vouchers for low-income families.
CHS reported here on the implementation and spending plan being shaped by the council including the proposed Seattle Preschool Program voucher pilot, expanding mentorship programs for justice-involved youth, and launching the universal school meals program at 53 public schools.
According to a council analysis, officials have raised concerns regarding the financial risk of drawing down reserve funds for the proposed meal program and a lack of explicit targets to close equity gaps. Wednesday, Hollingsworth said her amendments were a response to those concerns and, she hoped, the start of “really intentional conversation about equity.”
Hollingsworth has long advocated for food equity as she worked in her family’s cannabis farming business. CHS reported here in 2025 on her work shaping the city’s $30 million Food Action Plan.
The full slate of proposed amendments is below. The council committee is planned for a final vote on the bill on July 22nd.
Proposed Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy Amendments
- Amendment 1
Sponsor: Councilmember Rivera
Description: Directs the formation of an Interdepartmental Team (IDT) including DEEL, HSD, OSE, and SPR that will meet quarterly. The IDT’s purpose is to ensure tight coordination, cross-departmental collaboration, and strict alignment with Levy requirements regarding program goals, request for proposals (RFPs), evaluations, budgets, and modifications. - Amendment 2
Sponsor: Councilmember Rinck
Description: This amendment embeds explicit equity benchmarks across the levy’s framework by adding defined strategy goals to all three investment domains (Ready to Start, Ready to Learn, and Ready to Launch). It establishes that a core measure of the levy’s success is explicitly closing opportunity gaps for those populations furthest from kindergarten readiness, grade-level standards, and post-secondary credential completion. - Amendment 3
Sponsor: Councilmember Lin
Description: Mandates that DEEL report annually to the Levy Oversight Committee regarding the Seattle Preschool Program’s (SPP) mixed-delivery placement rates, recruitment activities, demographics, and administrative barriers for family childcare (FCC) providers. It also requires that the Oversight Committee include representation with experience in family childcare to enhance programmatic oversight. - Amendment 4
Sponsor: Councilmembers Foster and Hollingsworth
Description: Pauses the implementation of the SPP Waitlist Voucher Pilot program during the 2026–2027 school year for further planning, shifting its rollout to 2027–2028. Requires DEEL to submit a demographic assessment of waitlist trends to the Council prior to fund disbursement. Redirects the $927,710 originally designated for the pilot’s first year to fund food assistance for low-income K-12 students over weekends and school breaks. - Amendment 5
Sponsor: Councilmember Rivera
Description: Directs the Director of DEEL to collaborate with and consider feedback from both the Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools (SPS) and the leadership of Seattle charter schools when designing K-12 educational investments, particularly regarding Expanded Learning Opportunities (ELO). - Amendment 6
Sponsor: Councilmembers Hollingsworth and Foster
Description: Delays the implementation of the Universal School Meals Program until the 2027–2028 school year to assess its long-term viability amid legal and tax challenges, freeing up $3,000,000. It reallocates $500,000 annually over the 6-year levy period to fund a food voucher program distributed by school personnel to low-income families over weekends and school breaks. - Amendment 7
Sponsor: Councilmember Rinck
Description: Updates the program implementation standards for Youth Safety investments by allowing Restorative Practices Coordinators stationed in elementary schools to work part-time, while preserving the 1.0 FTE full-time status requirement for coordinators at other school levels. - Amendment 8
Sponsor: Councilmember Rinck
Description: Requires DEEL and HSD to submit a comprehensive framework report to City Council after the 2026–2027 school year outlining systems-level coordination for all city-funded school safety efforts. Presenting this report is a strict condition for future funding, competitive bidding, or contract renewals within Restorative Practices, Opportunity-Based Mentoring, and HSD School-Based Safety programs. - Amendment 9
Sponsor: Councilmember Hollingsworth
Description: Adds “exposure” to the approved list of college and career readiness activities under the Enrichment Supports for Expanded Learning Opportunities strategy. This adjustment explicitly clarifies that levy funds can be deployed for programming that exposes K-12 students to diverse collegiate and career paths. - Amendment 10
Sponsor: Councilmember Hollingsworth
Description: Inserts a explicit directive into the Path to Trades Expansion program framework at Seattle Colleges, mandating that career exposure and exploration events organized for public high school students and their families must be structured to be culturally relevant. - Amendment 11
Sponsor: Councilmember Rinck
Description: Introduces an enrollment prioritization within the Seattle Promise Pathway Programs to support high-demand pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship paths leading directly to careers with the City of Seattle. Funded provisions include dedicated career counseling, labor union engagement, and an additional one-time scholarship of up to $1,500 to assist registered apprentices with the cost of required tools and professional supplies.
Joy and the corporate Dem’s/RINO members want to ram a stick in the spokes.
Why can’t we do both? Free meals 365 a year. It would take some burden off of an overwhelmed food bank system. Would insure kids get good food.
So I challenge Joy to bring an amendment with both yours and Katie’s ideas. With cuts to SNAP and other programs via federal govt. We need to pick up the slack until it’s restored. Meaning the billionaires need to be taxed. Capital gains taxes would bring in 100’s of millions. People who have small portfolios of 2 million or less would pay little to no taxes on a sliding scale.
People will say “You are biting the hand that feeds you!””They will move.” and other scare tactics will not hold water. This is Seattle. People want to live here. Not Nashville or Houston or AZ. We have the workforce available here. If you want to live here? You need to pay for it like the rest of us. They made 10’s and 100’s of millions and getting richer playing money games. Bonuses and the ilk. There’s a couple billionaires around here. They too need to pay their fair share. It’s going to take 100’s of millions for infrastructure construction and restorations. We can’t live on regressive taxes forever.
They bought up everything around here and Seattle is expensive to live in. It didn’t used to be that way. I am with Katie…Call their bluff because it is a bluff and say “bye”
Sorry, no. Means testing food for kids is self-defeating and gross. Can’t believe I’m in agreement with Saka on this one…
Have a spine and stand ten toes down on the millionaires tax passing completely. It’s massively popular, locally and nationally. We are not in the position to be questioning such an already meager proposal, even if anti-tax assholes abound and have outsized voices due to their outsized wealth (from dodging taxes).
But hey always count on the council to capitulate to the pro-business narrative framing, because GOD FORBID we fight for even more taxes on the people who make at least one million dollars per year in income. They can leave for Arizona or Idaho if they want to dodge taxes.
We have to have policies that make our tax system less regressive. The war on the poor created this. Nobody else.
Good on Saka. Having two groups of kids is bad for the “free lunchers”
And why is CM Hollingsworth picking so many fights with Mayor Wilson? CM Hollingsworth has a “immediate action safety” plane for cap hill from 2025 that’s still not fully implemented. Why doesn’t CM Hollingsworth focus on getting her safety plan implemented instead of her fighting with Mayor Wilson – CM Hollingsworth refused to block or hold Mayor Harrell accountable during his term in office, why the change with Mayor Wilson?
“And why is CM Hollingsworth picking so many fights with Mayor Wilson?”
Easy…She owns a business. She carries two, five gallon buckets of Bruce’s tears everywhere she goes. She knows she’s toast next election.
That’s all it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Now this is the kind of representation I expected when I bankrolled Hollingsworth’s campaign!
Glad she’s been picking up some talking points at our weekly
Republicanjob creators lunches! Rent control is bad! Children don’t need food! If you tax us rich people we’ll all take our money and move to Cleveland!I’m so glad that Joy has discovered the joy of taking food out of the mouths of children while eating exotic food on a yacht.
Seriously, F those kids, I need that money to buy more politicians.
They call it fiscally responsible. I call it morally bankrupt.
The fact that there is every a (false) forced choice between pre-school for low income families (also directly related to food security) and food for other school kids just shows how centrist and corporate-captured this city (and state) really is. In a city with numerous millionaires, food insecurity should not exist. People try to paint Seattle as some sort of leftist fever dream, but in reality our policies are center-left at best. With Hollingsworth at the helm, they often are center-right.
It’s frustrating that CM Hollingsworth gives “South east Seattle” as her reason. CM Hollingsworth really should have ran for city wide rather than d3 as she doesn’t show up for d3
The Seattle Times adds a bit more clarity to this, that basically the proposal is to give everyone in SPS free breakfast and lunch via property tax levy. I can’t imagine how much waste this generates, and cost.
Waste how? Like what would be wasted?