The court put the Legislature on notice that if lawmakers don’t fully fund basic education, the court could intervene.
We don’t need this state’s public education system run by Supreme Court justices. Lawmakers know what must be done. They passed significant education reform efforts in 2009, but they punted on a revenue package to pay for those reforms. It’s time to step up to those funding obligations.
Their immediate goal must be to get through the 2012 legislative session without doing additional financial damage to the K-12 infrastructure. Immediately after adjournment, legislators must set the state on a course to fully fund the education reforms that are scheduled to be implemented between now and 2018. Failure to act will be a failure of leadership.
Granted, it’s a difficult assignment, especially in these difficult financial times. But the courts have said, and we agree, that the state must once again make public education the priority that the state constitution says it must be. If lawmakers expect voters to approve additional revenue to pay for K-12 education, the Legislature must put a specific plan in place that guarantees the additional education dollars cannot and will not be siphoned off for other programs.
The first assignment, however, is to plug a $1.5 billion gap in the state’s operating budget. After three successive years of budget reductions, there is pressure to pass yet another all-cuts budget.
Gov. Chris Gregoire has gone down a different path. She is proposing a half-cent increase in the state sales tax, which would raise about $500 million to offset cuts to K-12, colleges, social services, prisons and parole. The extra sales tax also would offset her proposed $100 million proposal to cut the school-year by four days and make up the $152 million hit to the state’s levy-equalization program that helps reduce funding disparities between school districts.
There has been no groundswell of support for the governor’s proposal, however. But lawmakers are only one week into their 60-day session.
Just four days before lawmakers convened here in Olympia, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling on the K-12 funding issue. Justices applauded lawmakers’ education reform legislation, but noted that no money has been identified to pay for those improvements.
“The court cannot idly stand by as the Legislature makes unfulfilled promises for reform,” Justice Debra Stephens wrote in the majority opinion. She noted that deadlines for reforms keep getting moved back and if left up to the Legislature, the court expects the delays would continue. The justices did not lay out a plan for maintaining oversight, however.
The Supreme Court made a point of saying any future cuts to education must be done for educational reasons, not because there is a fiscal crisis.
Seven justices signed the majority opinion, and two signed a partial dissent. In dissent, Chief Justice Barbara Madsen and Justice Jim Johnson said the separation of powers requires the court to step aside and let the legislative branch solve the school funding crisis.
That’s a costly proposition.
State School Superintendent Randy Dorn says the education reforms approved two years ago will cost the state an extra $2.5 billion to $4 billion. “The job of paying for that is what legislators signed up for,” said Dorn, a Democrat from Eatonville.
Two top budget writers, Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, and Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, have ideas for a long-term shift of funding from local to state property taxes. The levy swap would increase the state tax and decrease local levy authority by an equivalent amount, giving school districts a source of funding that is uniform across the state and not dependent on occasional local votes.
That, charter schools, an income tax and many other solutions will be put forth as ways for the state to again meet its responsibility to fully fund basic education. It’s clear that lawmakers cannot continue to punt on this, because the Supreme Court justices will be monitoring their progress.
It’s imperative that state residents stay fully informed as the Legislature, Dorn and the governor wrestle with this monumental problem. There’s a good chance, given limits on legislative tax increases, that voters will be asked to help lawmakers with a final funding solution.
