capitol watch
Lawmakers have a big task ahead of them in 2017— fully comply with state Supreme Court’ s 2012 McCleary education funding ruling by the start of the 2018-19 school year.
But, the heaviest lift is ahead— levy reform. It will remedy local school districts’ use of local levy dollars to pay for K-12 basic education expenditures, particularly teacher salaries, that are the responsibility of the state.
With the two-year budget negotiations taking place in 2017 and the final report on the full costs to address levy reform, all eyes, including the Supreme Court justices, are on the solution, cost and timeline to implement the solution.
This piece of the state budget is sure to reignite calls for new and higher taxes. And, more complicated yet, is the unpalatable prospect that property-rich school districts will be asked to pay more in the state’ s Common Schools Levy to supplement schools in rural, less affluent parts of the state.
mccleary in a nutshell
Washington state has the strongest and clearest language on education funding in the nation. It can be found in Article IX, Section 1, which reads in part:“ It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders …”
It’ s the“ paramount duty” reference the McCleary plaintiffs relied on in their case, arguing that if education truly is the top priority for the state, then the Legislature was falling down on the job. It turned out to be a winning argument. In the 2012 McCleary v. State of Washington education funding case, the state Supreme Court ordered the state to comply with the state constitution and fully and equitably fund the program of K-12 basic education as defined in House bills 2261( 2009) and 2776( 2010).
That includes pupil transportation, full-day kindergarten, K-3 class-size reductions and materials, supplies and operating costs, or MSOCs. The Legislature has put in place funding for these elements already, to the tune of $ 4.5 billion since 2013.
But, there’ s an added wrinkle. School districts bargain teacher salary increases and other benefit costs at the local level. Turns out, they use roughly $ 1.5 billion in local levy dollars every year, or about $ 14,000 per teacher, to fund the contracts, according to numbers supplied Nov. 15, 2016 by an outside consulting group hired to prepare for costs in the 2017-19 budget.
So, the court added in its ruling that the state must come up with a solution to move the costs of teacher salaries back to the state budget, protecting levy dollars for the school program enhancements for which they are intended.
cost of levy reform, solutions unclear
Four years later and a legislative body deemed in contempt of court for failing to fully address McCleary and levied with a $ 100,000 per day fine since 2015, the last piece to tackle is teacher compensation, or levy reform, and the statutory deadline for full compliance is September 2018.
That means a plan must be put in place this year. It’ s a tall order, if failed past attempts are any indication.
Not only could levy reform funding and changes impact the program of K-12 basic education— specifically, will student outcomes improve with the additional dollars— but the implications of the cost to the two-year budget are far from known, as are the details on proposals for new and higher taxes to pay for the change.
For more information on McCleary, educational outcomes and program specifics, contact AWB Government Affairs Director Amy Anderson at AmyA @ awb. org. For information on the budget and tax implications of McCleary, contact AWB Government Affairs Director Eric Lohnes at EricL @ awb. org. Both can be reached at 360.943.1600. winter 2017 47