By an 11-1 vote, the House Education Appropriations Committee approved House Bill 2261 today. That keeps it alive past today's committee cutoff.

The bill is a place saver with a broad enough title to carry whatever compromise comes out before the end of session. It replaces House Bill 1410 which was the result of an 18-month examination by the Basic Education Finance Task Force.

Apparently the changes called for in that bill were too sweeping for the education community – the teachers union, the school directors, the school administrators and other education unions. While some endorsed the initial effort, others – led by the Washington Education Association – raised all sorts of objections.

At the same time, many groups outside the establishment – education advocacy groups and business leaders – were enthusiastic.

Rather than beat their heads against The Wall, the sponsors decided to take a step back and try to work through the objections. They figured that calling for an eventual 70 percent increase in ed funding would be enough for schools to come to the table and talk about increased accountability, transparency and fairness.

On Monday, no one objected though some had concerns. That led committee Chairwoman Kathy Haigh to say: "I'm much more encouraged that we're going to get the job done."

Here is how Rep. Ross Hunter, one of the so-called Gang of Six that wrote the bill, describes the process from now on:

We’re in the middle of a tumultuous period in the evolution of the bills. Our original bills (HB 1410 and SB 5444) were a 110 page first draft that we expected to engender a robust discussion. We were right about part of it - the discussion was robust, but unfortunately not substantive. The Olympia-based education groups have been very negative on the proposal, with most outside groups supportive. The legislation changes distribution of billions of dollars, and we were probably naive to expect change of this magnitude to go smoothly.

We’ve taken a new approach - we’re starting with a blank slate instead of a large first draft. We’ve introduced two bills with similar titles but no real content. The new bills are HB 2261 and SB 6048. We will move these bills through the system while we work on re-crafting a comprehensive bill. This is the strategy we used successfully in fixing the math standards last year.