District 26 Sen. Jan Angel said last week that Gov. Jay Inslee came in with this great plan for education, but similar I-1351 there is no funding mechanism tied to it.
“The governor sells us on a plan before he tells us how he’s going to fund it,” Angel (R-Port Orchard) said in an Dec. 16 interview. “It is a two-sided coin, they should go together. But we’re getting only one side of the coin.”
On Dec. 15, Inslee announced his education policy initiatives at a town-hall style meeting in person in Bellevue.
Inslee’s plan is to put several billion dollars more into preschool through college education, workforce training and meeting the state’s obligation to fully fund education through the McCleary ruling a year early, The Associated Press reported last week.
On Dec. 18, he unveiled a $39 billion, two-year budget that includes a new $2.3 billion education plan with the largest-ever state investment in early learning, and follows through on the state’s commitment to fully and sustainably fund the Legislature’s commitment to basic education.
As recently as 2007, public schools accounted for less than 39 percent of state spending. Under the governor’s budget, public schools’ share of state spending would increase to 47 percent.
“Every legislator in our state wants to fix this and get it right,” Angel said. “We want to see what type of revenue we have coming in.”
She said the state has about $1 billion in additional revenue that has come in.
“Logically, you would figure out what is coming that could be earmarked and go straight to eduction, if we still have enough to cover the basic needs.” Angel said. “We can’t fund it all. Maybe there are some things we should be funding.”
Dorn said plan doesn’t comply with court order
In 2012, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers are not meeting their constitutional responsibility to fully pay for basic education and that they were relying too much on local tax-levy dollars. The court gave the Legislature until the 2017-18 school year to fix the problem.
“We have a very solid, fiscally sound, secure and stable way of financing everything I’ve talked about today,” the governor said in response to a question at his town hall meeting. “I can tell you it’s a real financing plan. It is not based on indebtedness.”
State Superintendent Randy Dorn said last week that Inslee’s education budget proposal falls far short of what is needed to comply with the orders issued by the Supreme Court in McCleary vs. Washington.
If adopted, it would move this state one step closer to a constitutional crisis, Dorn said in a statement.
“This issue is not complicated,” Dorn said. “Over and over again our courts have ruled that relying on levies to fund a major portion of our education system is unconstitutional. The governor’s proposal does not address that central fact.”
Inslee’s education plan
Inslee’s agenda includes money for all-day kindergarten and smaller classes in the early grades by the 2016-17 school year, plus money to finish paying for classroom materials and supplies, The Associated Press reported.
In addition to budget plans related to the education lawsuit, the governor is proposing:
• Two more years without a college tuition increase.
• Raises for public school teachers, adding up to more than half a million dollars.
• More money for college scholarships, including a big investment in Opportunity Scholarships for students interested in technology or health care fields.
• Dollars to assist students who need help, such as clothing, meals and medical care.
• Drop-out prevention in both middle and high schools.
• Another $78.8 million to add 6,358 more spaces for low-income children in state-funded preschools, which would increase the program’s reach to 70 percent of eligible kids.
• More than $14 million for job training, basic education and pre-apprenticeship work at community colleges.
Inslee’s budget fully funds the overlap between the class size initiative passed by voters last month and previous class size reductions approved by the Legislature: paying to shrink kindergarten through third grade classes to an average of 17 kids.
That would cost the state nearly half a million dollars over two years for hiring more than 7,000 new teachers. But the initiative called for decreases in class size at every grade.
Money to pay for more classroom space to house those extra teachers will come later, in the state building budget for the next budget cycle, said David Schumacher, director of the Office of Financial Management told The Associated Press.
Republican lawmakers are not happy with what they have heard so far of the governor’s education plans. They want to see the governor’s plan for answering the Supreme Court’s criticism of the state’s over-reliance on local levy dollars to pay for education. They think the governor is not showing leadership on what to do with the class size Initiative 1351, a measure that at least a few lawmakers in that caucus say they support suspending for the next budget cycle. And they don’t think new revenue sources are needed for education.
Marijuana revenue
Angel said recreational marijuana has created a lot of revenue, but the state needs to be a “good provider” to the cities and counties.
“They can’t take all that revenue because our police and first responders,” she said. “We are having to front law enforcement issues we are having and will have with the marijuana industries. The state has have a portion of those funds going to our cities and counties from where that money is generated.”
Angel said cities who have put a moratorium of recreational marijuana sales should not get a portion of the revenue.
“Ironically, are we going to be funding our schools with drug money,” she said. “Look’s like we might be. All those decisions need to be made and we don’t know how much money.”
Angel said the governor can’t assure the state can start implementing new taxes on the public.
