Not fair: Education funding in WA still favors the rich. Here’s why, and how to fix it

Contrary to two state Supreme Court decisions, some school districts in Pierce County with lower property values still struggle to pay for basic education. From a social justice perspective this is shameful. From a legal perspective, how we are funding schools may well be unconstitutional (again).

In 2023, state lawmakers should fix this. If they don’t, the Washington Supreme Court should review whether the state is complying with its 2012 McCleary decision.

In that decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that relying upon local levies to fund basic education was unconstitutional, since amply funding basic education is the paramount responsibility of the state.

To come into compliance with the state Supreme Court’s decision, in 2017-18 the state spent billions of new dollars on education. Washington Governor Jay Inslee celebrated, stating: “At long last, our Legislature is providing the funding necessary to cover the basic costs of our K-12 schools.”

Barely five years later, however, Washington is sliding right back to where it was, with some districts — especially property-poorer ones — relying upon local levies to fund expenses the state should be paying for.

How did we spend billions more on education, then end up in nearly the same spot?

Here’s the simple answer: The state agreed the new money could also be spent on teacher raises, and once that happened, teachers’ unions demanded it.

I have absolutely zero problem paying teachers well, and the unions were just doing their job. The contracts also resulted from collective bargaining, so what’s the problem?

Well, we should understand in these salary negotiations that school superintendents and largely volunteer school boards sit across the table from negotiators who are fully aware that if they drag out talks until August, the pressure on the school board to open classes on-time grows. In the summer of new money in 2018, strikes, timed to coincide with the start of the new school year, were authorized in some districts across the state. To avoid strikes, some districts settled on raises over 15%. That set a very high bar.

Complicating the situation, the state gave school districts with higher property values more money for salaries than property-poorer districts, because it cost more to live and work there. These “regionalization” funds are well-intentioned, but it’s also an approach that forces poorer districts to enter into an uneven competition for teachers. For example, for every dollar Bethel School District receives, Tacoma and Gig Harbor schools receive $1.12. Auburn receives $1.16. As the first day of school approached in 2018, the only way property-poorer districts could be salary competitive with neighboring districts was to use the new state money plus their levy dollars.

The teachers’ union boasted that its “members in school districts across the state negotiated historic pay increases.”

The problem is, after the “historic pay increases,” in some of the poorer districts there wasn’t enough money left over for kids.

This wasn’t true everywhere. In some property-rich districts, a chunk of the negotiated salary increases could be covered by regionalization funds received from the state. In poorer districts that did not receive those funds, levy dollars were needed to pay for basic education.

In Pierce County, for example, school districts are spending millions of local levy dollars to fund special education. Bethel alone is spending roughly $4 million on special education that, according to the state Supreme Court, should be paid by the state.

This September, a committee will give the governor, state school superintendent and the legislature recommendations on how to fix this. Those recommendations need to be bold. Voters in November should elect legislators who have the spine and spleen it will take to ensure the state funds basic education for all kids.

Here are three simple but politically tough recommendations that would go a long way toward achieving a more equitable funding system.

• The state should provide each district with the same, fixed amount of dollars per student. That amount must be considerably more than needed to sufficiently fund basic education.
• Limited upward adjustments to the per-student amount should be made for special education, and for areas with high remediation needs and with high housing costs. However, the cost of housing adjustments should be based on large, metropolitan areas (such as Puget Sound), not on a district-by-district basis.
• The legislature must cement the maximum amount per student that can be spent on basic education salaries, and restrict the use of local levy dollars to only funding programs and positions not covered by the state’s definition of basic education.

Washington stands nearly alone in having a paramount constitutional obligation to amply fund basic education. It is an obligation we are not yet fulfilling for all children. We must.

If we don’t, perhaps the state Supreme Court should once again order compliance.

Bill Bryant, who served on the Seattle Port Commission from 2008-16, ran against Jay Inslee as the Republican nominee in Washington’s 2016 governor’s race.

This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.