Where’s the love for Pierce County kids and Suciasaurus Rex? What are lawmakers thinking?
For a group of Pierce County kids, it’s become clear that getting a bill enacted into state law demands the tenacity of a dog with a steak bone — or perhaps, a paleontologist with a dinosaur bone.
One step forward, one step back is the name of the game for teacher Amy Cole and her former class of fourth graders at Elmhurst Elementary School in Parkland.
Their plea for an official Washington state dinosaur has become a lesson in persistence that deserves a positive outcome, not burial in the legislative fossil record.
Now in sixth grade, these Franklin Pierce School District students shouldn’t have to wait until high school for proof that their government takes the hard work of young people seriously.
But after an unexpected setback in this year’s Legislature, they have reason to wonder.
“The argument I heard circulating is that there were more important issues to focus on during a pandemic and protest, which I completely agree with,” Cole told us Tuesday. “But at the same time I think it’s important to engage with young people as early as possible.
“Why can’t we do both?”
What initially triggered her students’ excitement was learning of another grade school class, in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago, that successfully pushed for an official state insect. Somehow that class managed to get their ladybug proposal through the Legislature and signed by the governor — the same year they floated it.
Granted, politics are different in 2021 than in 1974. And this year’s session was like no other, with the Capitol closed behind a fence, all public testimony delivered remotely and a limit on bill introductions.
Still, as Gov. Jay Inslee winds down his bill-signing calendar this month, it’s disappointing that the Suciasaurus Rex again didn’t make it to his desk.
In 2019, Cole’s students were taking a civics unit, absorbed their teacher’s prehistoric passion — dinosaur posters on her classroom walls, a mug on her desk — and came up with a proposal to do what 12 states have already done: name an official state dinosaur.
The object of the young dinophiles’ research: Suciasaurus Rex, a mysterious carnivore and source of a piece of thigh bone discovered on Sucia Island in San Juan County in 2012. An estimated 80 million years old, it’s the first known dinosaur artifact in our state. Not native to these parts, it landed in Washington similar to how many modern-day residents arrive here: by way of California.
In 2020, the students’ got so close to victory, they could almost taste it. Their bill passed the House with a resounding 91-7 vote, only to die in the Senate.
And this year? Their hopes were snatched from the air like a pterodactyl in the claws of a late Jurassic predator. Suciasaurus Rex didn’t advance past a House committee hearing.
No matter that the bill enjoys support from adults at the state Parks and Recreation Commission, along with University of Washington paleontologists who discovered and painstakingly studied the bone.
No matter that a pair of Cole’s former students, who’ve since moved on with their pre-adolescent lives, set aside COVID-19 distractions and stage fright to testify for House Bill 1067 back in January.
From the beginning, the legislative campaign for a state dinosaur has been led by Rep. Melanie Morgan, D-Parkland. There’s no question she sponsored more urgent bills this year, such as adopting Juneteenth as an official state holiday — part of a broad effort to bring more racial justice, equity and awareness to Washington.
And yet the former Franklin Pierce School Board member summed up the argument for HB 1067 quite well. “It may seem like a low-priority bill in the time of COVID,” Morgan told legislators, “but I assure you that showing our young people that government is here for them is never a low priority.”
By this time next year, state leaders should send our youth an important message: You can make a difference in Olympia even if you live in Pierce County’s lowest-income school district, don’t have a paid lobbyist, can’t afford election contributions and aren’t yet an adult.
Your patience will be rewarded, young people of Washington — and your ideas have teeth.
News Tribune editorials reflect the views of our Editorial Board and are written by opinion editor Matt Misterek. Other board members are: Stephanie Pedersen, News Tribune president and editor; Matt Driscoll, local columnist; and Jim Walton, community representative. The Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom and does not influence the work of news reporting and editing staffs. For questions about the board or our editorials, email matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 1:00 PM.