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Promises made in K-12 education system are promises broken

By Randy Dorn | For The Olympian • Published April 06, 2009

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Picture this: School districts on the brink of financial crisis. Local levies filling more and more of district budgets. Class sizes growing. Teachers laid off.

Welcome to 1977.

That was the situation when a series of court rulings changed the way Washington funded public education. At that time, the state hadn't been meeting its constitutional requirement to "amply" fund education. The rulings became a commitment, a promise, to lift public education into the next century.

Flash forward to 2009: The budgets proposed last week by the state House and Senate Ways and Means committees amount to nothing more than history repeating itself.

The promise made in 1977 has been broken.

We have made some progress. Students in special education are part of basic education and disparities in local levies and in teacher salaries have been minimized. Sweeping reforms were enacted to measure student progress and ensure that all students have necessary skills when they graduate.

During the past several years, we've put together a myriad of studies that have determined that our school funding formulas are inequitable and inadequate and have suggested new and better ways to fund our schools. And we've heard from major companies such as Microsoft and The Boeing Co. that we must train our students in science and math if we are to remain competitive globally in this century and beyond.

But all that progress is being threatened. We're in serious danger of returning to 1977 — of erasing the progress we've made and stepping backwards.

Some might say schools don't need more state money because of the federal stimulus funds. But much of the stimulus funds is tied to specific uses, such as students in special education, Title I schools and homeless children. It can't be used to back-fill state funding reductions.

Second, the stimulus funds won't be enough to fill district deficits. The Senate is proposing a net reduction (excluding federal funds targeted to specific programs) of $375 million each school year, enough to employ about 4,500 mid-career teachers. The House proposes to reduce funding by $250 million each year, enough to employ about 3,000 mid-career teachers.