State still short-changes community-technical college funding

When many of us talk about education in Washington, our conversation revolves around public schools and charter schools. The demands are real.

The Legislature struggles to meet the state Supreme Court’s mandate to fully fund education from kindergarten through 12th grade, and that is a critical situation for the entire state.

The education conversation, though, extends deeper than K-12. When a senior graduates from high school, he or she needs a place to go to continue education. When a working parent is ready to grow new skills, when someone has lost a job and is ready to learn a new industry, when an entrepreneur is ready to move from an idea to a successful small business.

All of these students — nearly 386,000 of them each year — turn to our state’s 34 community and technical colleges. That’s nearly 60 percent of all students enrolled in the state’s public colleges and universities.

While their reasons for choosing community college vary, all of these students receive an excellent education at these colleges without paying a premium price. Many come out prepared to continue their education and pursue advanced degrees while others learn the technical skills that local employers need and come out ready to work in living wage, high-demand jobs.

Our community and technical colleges, unfortunately, have seen minimal support from the Legislature since the recession. In real dollars, state funding is down to levels not seen since before 2007. The bonds needed to construct, maintain and repair campus buildings across the state have decreased more than half — by 55 percent — in the same time period. Per-student funding has declined by more than 8 percent. Meanwhile, our state’s skills gap and unfilled jobs in high demand industries continually increases.

For students and their families, the Legislature, over the same period, raised tuition more than 43 percent. That’s even with a much-welcomed 5 percent cut for the 2015-2016 school year.

In short, students and their families are being asked to carry more of the financial burden than at any other time in the history of our community and technical colleges, while at the same time many colleges are cutting programs and delaying growth and development, including developing new programs that support Washington's growth industries. The drop in state funding and the resulting tuition hikes amount to lost opportunities for students, our communities and our economy.

To maintain and expand our middle class and our world-class economy, our state needs to support and grow our community and technical colleges. Continued budget reductions and tuition increases are not the answer. State lawmakers cannot leave 386,000 students behind.

We need the same urgency and action we saw this year as they saved the education of 1,500 charter-school students. Our state’s community and technical college students, their families, communities and the state depend on it. Our hope is that the Legislature uses the interim recess to not only fix the K-12 funding issue, but also finds ways to support community and technical colleges in the solution.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 7:21 PM with the headline "State still short-changes community-technical college funding."