Late in June, the legislature reached a budget settlement that was loudly trumpeted as having satisfied McCleary. Since then, local media and politicians have stated that the state has finally met its obligation to amply fund education as per McCleary and the State Constitution. The claim is based on a narrow interpretation of the McCleary ruling: that the state must assume full funding of basic education implies that local levies cannot be used for basic education.

The state has created a budget that ends basic education funding through local levies. Starting in 2019, they will require that local levies only be used for “Enrichment Activities.” They then limit the dollars that can be levied locally, and replace lost revenues with an increase in the statewide property tax. They also added revenue through closing some tax loopholes adding a few taxes and borrowing money from the rainy day fund.

Did they satisfy the McCleary Court order holding them in contempt? They say there is a ton of new money in education.

So.

Is there a ton of new money for local bargaining? Paramount Duty estimates an additional $5 billion a year is needed to provide ample funding. The State provided $7.2 Billion over 4 years. But wait! Estimated losses to education funding by limiting local levy dollars are estimated at $1.4 Billion. That puts it at $5.8 Billion over 4 years in new money. But wait! If inflation matches the Federal Reserve goal of 3%, around $0.5 Billion per year is lost to increasing costs. So, over 4 years there is an increase in spending power of $3.8 Billion, which is less than $1 Billion/year: only 20% of what Paramount Duty requires.

Hold on. It gets worse.

The court order demanded of the state that they fund education as defined by the “Prototypical School Model” as determined by the Legislature’s own “Quality Education Council” (QEC). The court specifically instructed that the Prototypical School Model used must be the one determined by the QEC. They said that the legislature couldn’t change the definition of basic education created by the QEC.

The legislature, in EHB 2422 which modifies the education budget, defined basic education as what is funded in their bill. Basic Education is whatever they choose to fund. They used the Prototypical School Model as a basis, and modified it by, among other things, increasing the class sizes for grades 4-12. Class sizes at the end of the 4 years defined by EHB 2422 will be 17 k-3, 27 4-6, 28 7-8 and 29 9-12.

Then, they fund salaries by looking at the number of students in your school to determine, by the ratios above what the number of funded teachers are, and multiplying that number by the average teacher’s salary as determined by them. Average teacher salary is going to be $59,344 in 2018-19, increasing to 64k at the end of the 4 year period defined in the new education funding bill. These numbers will be increased by the CPI, and by regional cost factors which vary from district to district.

They also cap the lowest salary at 40,000 and the highest salary is to be less than 90k, with the above corrections included.

So, take your base salary, plus TRI and compare it to the salary ceilings created by the legislature. Did they increase salaries? For districts that don’t get much TRI, the answer is yes. For most west side districts, the answer is not much, if any.

But wait. They are not creating a salary schedule. They are creating a funding formula. Each district must fund all basic education, meaning all teacher salaries, from this allotment. Grades k-3 are funded at 1 teacher per 17 students, which will effectively lower class size in lower grades in most districts. That’s good. Grades 4-12, on the other hand, are funded well below the actual class sizes needed to provide reasonable education to our students. Since the dollar pool is limited, if we staff to reasonable class size, we will be required to reduce the amount of money spent on educator salaries to comply with the spending limits created by their salary allocation.

Lower class sizes can only be had by reducing educator salaries.

There are many other things I find troubling about the budget.

• The property tax used places greater burdens on the middle class in Washington and leaves wealth untouched. This only makes the most unfair tax system in the country more unfair.
• The state takes over control of our health care plans in 2020, while at the same time making it illegal to bargain for any benefit provided by the state. So, our bargaining rights for benefits are eliminated.
• The state does maintain collective bargaining rights, but by limiting the money we can bargain for, they limit our bargaining rights. My analogy is they build a box. The fix the sides, floor and ceiling in the box. They decide how much sand to pour into the box. Then they give us the bargaining right to push the sand around inside the box. We can’t ask for more sand. We just decide who gets the sand.
• The state said that eliminating salary disparities between adjacent districts required eliminating the salary schedule staff mix formula. Then, they put in regional cost differences so that, necessarily, adjacent school districts will have different salary funding. They made funding disparities worse, not better.

In analyzing whether or not this is a good education budget, we ask the following questions:

• Did the state end reliance on local levies? Sort of, but the formula they use for capping local levy dollars will vary tremendously from district to district, so local funding will vary a great deal depending on local property values.
• Did the state fund McCleary? No. Not even close (above).
• Did the state define a sustainable funding source for education? No. They didn’t even try.
• Did the state fund the Prototypical School Model? No. The state defined basic education as whatever they choose to fund. “Red is the color of all the objects I choose to call red.”
• Did the state fund local educator salaries? No. Not even close.
• Did the state preserve local bargaining rights? No. Not even close. (Though bargaining is more important than ever, bargaining will be a defensive undertaking unless we can find “workarounds” to legislative intent.
• Did the state create a system in which rich people get to avoid paying their fair share? Yes. In this they succeeded handsomely.

There is much more to this budget – too much to go into here. There were some positive changes to education policy, and some negative. But it is really important for us to state publicly that McCleary was not funded. It is imperative that we not give lip service to the claim this is an “historic” education funding bill.

Hell. In the last biennium they put more per year into education than they did this time. The only thing historic about this budget is the amount of chaos that will be created as we, in the trenches, try to make it work.

And we will. That’s what we do.