Education: Don’t blame Legislature for strikes

Lest we repeat 2011 and 1979, I hope that the Tacoma School District comes to a satisfying resolution to pay teachers quickly within the bounds of the McCleary decision.

Fully funding education is always talked up as reducing class sizes and making sure that teachers don’t pay out of pocket for basic classroom materials. But when the money’s there, guess what the highest priority is? Salaries. No word on the other things.

The bigger problem is that Tacoma passed a levy far in excess of the cap it knew would come on levy amounts. I assume they went for broke in spite of the Legislature’s funding formula to make a play to plead poverty and re-engineer McCleary to allow them to keep the higher levels that most other school districts will adhere to.

It’s not a “mess”’ by the Legislature. Not after the billions more we just dumped into the funding stream.

So give all the raises you want. We have fully funded education with that new state formula, and however the district chooses to spend the money with caps and levy swaps is their business.

Spend the money as you will. And I am sure we won’t be “fully funded” again next legislative session.