Scoop du jour: Preparing for an underfunded school year

George Le Masurier

Scoop du jour

Thousands of parents around the peninsulas are preparing their children for school in a week or so. At the same time, hundreds of teachers and other education workers are preparing themselves to provide an inspiring and motivating environment for their students.

Meanwhile, Peninsula School District administrators are trying to figure out how they will manage to meet the expectations of parents, educators and students given the deep cuts in public education funding in our state.

Many people felt the state was not adequately funding public schools before the recession. Now, there’s even less money.

For many years, the levy system provided local control over the extent of extra programs in a school district.

If a certain community wanted to provide something special that went above and beyond the costs of providing a basic education, voters could approve a levy to fund it.

That worked fine when the state was funding schools with enough money to pay for basic items, such as transportation and teacher’s salaries. School districts passed levies in those bygone days to introduce computers and other such futuristic tools into schools.

But the state began to cut back or at least not keep up with the rising cost of providing a basic education.

In the 1970s, maintenance and operation levies rose to become 40 to 45 percent of school budgets.

A public lawsuit forced the state Legislature to increase its funding of schools, and subsequent legislation limited levies to a maximum of 24 percent of their budget.

Like most districts nowadays, the Peninsula School District keeps its levy at about 20 percent of the total budget. But it’s not the percentage that’s troubling educators these days, it’s what levies are being used for.

They no longer pay for extra programs. They’re being used to provide the most basic of education needs, such as buses, teachers and special education programs.

By usurping its responsibility to adequately fund basic education, the state has forced schools to become addicted to levies.

What was designed to provide luxury add-ons has become an essential need.

The question is really what comprises a basic education. How do we interpret the state constitution when it says the paramount duty of the Legislature is to fund education adequately?

That is at the heart of legislation passed in the 2009 session, but because of a lack of state revenue, it won’t begin making an impact for years to come.

Washington used to spend 13 percent more than the national average on public schools. Today, it spends 11 percent less. Education used to comprise 15.4 percent of the state budget; today it makes up just 4.5 percent.

We now rank 42nd of the 50 states in per-pupil spending and 46th in class size –– we were 15th 10 years ago.

Two recent exhaustive studies reported that Washington underfunds its public schools by either 25 or 45 percent.

Educators and others are trying to move the conversation from taxes to a value proposition: Do you see funding schools as an investment? Do you believe there is a direct tie between investing in education and a corresponding return in economic development?

Many of us believe we all benefit when high school graduates are better equipped to become contributing citizens.