In Our Opinion
Thursday, Aug. 13, was a day when math made a lot of headlines in our part of the world.
Former Eagles quarterback Vernon Adams passed his test in Eugene allowing him to finally fulfill his final requirement towards graduation from Eastern Washington University and get his shot to play quarterback with the Oregon Ducks.
Meanwhile in Olympia, the Washington state Supreme Court issued their grade to the state Legislature over efforts to fully fund K-12 education.
In the opinion of the seven justices who interpret the law, they unanimously handed lawmakers the equivalent of a big fat “I” for incomplete.
The court ruled unanimously that until the legislature puts forth a plan that will be acceptable to justices in satisfying the requirements of the McCleary Decision, the state faces a $100,000 per day fine.
It wasn’t as if this was a surprise to legislators. In September 2014 they were ruled to be in contempt of court and given until the end of the recently completed session to satisfy those demands.
The timing of Thursday’s ruling seemed to be a bolt of lightning out of the blue, however, catching many by surprise.
That included the Cheney Free Press editorial board, whose original intent was to offer thoughts how we felt lawmakers had done in their marathon sessions in properly increasing school funding. The court seems to have beaten us to it.
Perhaps the best way to evaluate the efforts of the Legislature is to look at the numbers. In the 2015-2017 biennial budget of $38 billion, K-12 education received a $2.9 billion raise to $18.15 billion. That’s a nearly 20 percent increase from the $15.26 billion it got in the last biennium, or about 48 percent of state spending the next two years.
By comparison the next biggest part of the budget pie is 18 percent and goes to “other human services” and 17 percent to the Department of Social and Health Services. Higher Education collects 8.5 percent and the Department of Natural Resources .8 percent.
Those are the numbers we know, but what is troubling are those we don’t. The court seems to know what they want out of legislators — to uphold the “paramount duty of providing for public schools” — as the state constitution stipulates.
Key education players, however, seem to find it hard to provide a hard number on how much is enough.
Inquiries to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the Washington Education Association as to just what they might want out of the Legislature were not at all clear.
“WEA doesn’t have a number,” union communications director Linda Mullen wrote in an email. Mullen directed us to a website with a graph showing an ultimate per-pupil expenditure of $12,701 by 2017-2018, up from the $7,645 WEA says was spent in 2014-2015.
“For OSPI’s perspective on fully funding basic education, I recommend checking out Dorn’s Complete Plan,” Kristen Jaudon, OSPI communications specialist also wrote in an email.
OSPI Superintendent Randy Dorn references the legislation that defines basic education, along with steps that need to be taken by the state to take the burden off local school districts and provide greater equity for students. But OSPI too seems to be elusive on a dollar figure.
While the court, the union and the state department of education each want more money for K-12 education, another uncertain number is what do the taxpayers in the state receive for this investment?
Will pledges of spending nearly 20 percent more of the budget to cut class size, pay teachers more and get youngsters an early jump on school with all-day kindergarten give us a likewise bump in test scores, graduation rates or similarly improve how schools performed on the state’s achievement index?
Just as there are expectations from the Legislature to solve the funding dilemma, shouldn’t citizens who pay the bills also have some assurances from schools?
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