Education: Support smaller class sizes

A TV commercial with children tells us they how they are thriving in their charter school and won’t go back to their other school.

My husband is a teacher in a large district. He advised one of the reasons the children are thriving is that in charter schools class sizes are much smaller than public schools. Charter schools are funded with our tax dollars.

The Washington State Supreme Court ruled last September that the charter school law is unconstitutional because charter schools aren’t “common” schools and therefore aren’t entitled to public money exclusively intended for those schools.

We approved Initiative 1351 in November 2014 to reduce class size and add support staff in K-12 schools .

In 2015, Washington’s top court fined the state $100,000 per day for failing to fund education.

This daily fine is being paid with our tax dollars. Charter schools have previously been funded with our tax dollars.

Elections are coming up in our state. We need every one of your votes to change the majority in the Legislatures back to representatives who would support and fully fund I-1351.

This story was originally published March 4, 2016 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Education: Support smaller class sizes."