The recent legislative session brought to the fore a question that has been simmering below the surface for years: Are we going to continue relying on local levies to fund basic education in this state?
Paying for a basic education for all our kids is the Legislature’s paramount duty under the state constitution, yet the share of the state budget that goes to support our public schools has steadily slipped over the past two decades to nearly 40 percent today.
Local levies, intended to pay for enhancements to basic education, now account for more than half of all basic school support services, such as pupil transportation, campus security, and custodial services.
The Legislature has become addicted to the use of local levies for basic services, while school districts have been forced to exhaust their levy capacity and operate on dangerously low budgetary reserves.
Late in the 2009 legislative session, a proposal emerged that would have deepened that addiction by not only raising the levy lid, but also cutting state support by $60 million. The losses in revenue to school districts would have ranged from a few thousand dollars to more than $1 million.
For example, the Evergreen School District in Vancouver would have lost $1.5 million for the 2010 school year. Lost revenue means a severe reduction or entire elimination of important student services and hundreds of jobs.
This legislation would have shifted more of the responsibility of supporting our public schools toward local taxpayers and create clear winners and losers out of our schools. Property-rich districts and those able to pass levies would have gained more resources, while those at the other end of the spectrum would have fallen further behind. This is completely at odds with our constitutional obligation to fund education fully and equally across our state.
Changing the balance of school levies is also at odds with the new educational funding course charted by the Legislature this year. A strong, bipartisan group of lawmakers helped pass House Bill 2261.
This measure, the product of years of study, will modernize our state’s definition of basic education and commit the state to full funding of areas such as transportation and all-day kindergarten. When funded, this new system will end the reliance on local levies to pay for basic support programs.
Creating a new financial blueprint for our schools was the greatest achievement of the 2009 Legislature, but it will be meaningless if future legislatures don’t provide the necessary funding and instead continue the addiction to local levies.
Education funding was at the forefront of the debate in Olympia in 2009. As we move forward as a state, we need to focus on the education funding reform process begun by the Legislature this year, and finally kick the habit of relying on the uncertainty and inequity of local levies to fund our schools.
George Dockins is executive director of Public School Employees of Washington, representing 26,000 school support workers. Prior to leading the state’s second largest education association, Dockins was a maintenance employee for the Eastmont School District for nearly 20 years.
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