Restore School Funding

Washington state has among the lowest school funding in the nation as a percent of income. This category includes articles on how we can restore school funding in Washington state by passing Senate Bill 6093 - which would add billions in funding for schools just by repealing a single massive tax break for the super rich.

School Funding in Washington State is 2 to 3 Billion Dollars Per Year Below the National Average

On June 2, 2015, the US Census released the latest in a series of annual reports called Public Education Finances. These reports are issued about 2 years after the school year they are reporting on. So this latest report is for the 2013 school year. These annual reports can be difficult to find. So at the end of this article, I have provided 15 links to all 15 years of reports I used to create the following chart. Here is the link to the latest report for 2013:
http://census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/econ/g13-aspef.pdf

The above chart is based on Table 12, Column 6 of each of the annual reports since 1996. There are some rather startling things about this chart. First, it shows that Washington state school funding as a percent of income plunged rather dramatically between the years 2011 and 2013. This is despite a court order and a commitment by the legislature to increase school funding. As of 2013, Washington spent 3.1 percent of income on pubic schools. In 1996, Washington State spent 4.3 percent of income on public schools which is also about the national average (which is the blue line in the chart above). The difference between 3.1 percent and 4.3 percent is about one to two billion dollars per year. The above chart does not include school construction and repair funding like some of my past charts. Had this been included, the total national average spending would have risen to about 5% of income and the total difference between Washington state and the national average would be about $2 to $3 billion per year.

Broken Promises, Shell Games and Poison Pills

Parents and teachers have not been told the truth about the recent “Levy Swipe” school funding plan passed by the Washington State legislature. In a July 31, 2017 Report to the Supreme Court, legislators claimed they have “more than doubled” school funding since 2011 and that their new plan will provide “$8.4 billion” in additional school funding.

http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/2017ReportbytheJointSelectCommittee.pdf

In this article, we will show that, due to a never ending charade of broken promises, shell games and poison pills, there has been a decline in school funding since 2011 and that the new Levy Swipe Plan will further reduce school funding in the coming years.

Summary

This report is divided into six sections. In Section 1, we describe the Seven Billion Dollar Broken Promise our legislature made to the Supreme Court in 2009 so that they could delay funding for our schools until the 2018 school year.

Section 2 uses the State legislature’s own charts they submitted to the Supreme Court to show that the Levy Swipe does not increase school funding. In fact, it is a complex shell game that actually reduces school funding by $200 million per year!

Section 3 describes how the legislature has used “Ghost Money” to transfer the tax burden for funding schools onto the backs of local homeowners over the past 17 years.

Section 4 explains how the illegal One Percent Tax Lid is a Slow Poison Pill that will gradually reduce school funding if there is a period of rapid home price increases similar to the rise in home prices during the past 17 years.

Section 5 reviews the Fast Poison Pill or the danger of the Levy Swipe “locking” the maximum levy rate. We then calculate how much school funding will drop if there is a sudden decline in home prices like there was in 2008 and during the Great Depression.

Section 6 explains two of the most harmful aspects of the Levy Swipe. The first is double taxation of homeowners in 2018. The second is the inability of local schools districts to make up school funds when the state fails to provide those funds. Many school districts would be hit by a double whammy of rising taxes & falling school funding.

Section 7 explains why our Supreme Court should repeal tax breaks for the rich instead of closing our public schools.

This report provides detailed evidence that, rather than helping our schools and our kids, the Levy Swipe scam is a ticking time bomb that is certain to gut school funding and severely harm our kids. In short, the new school funding plan is even worse than the old (unconstitutionally low) school funding plan. Please share this important article with parents, teachers and other citizens concerned about the future of our public schools.

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I. The Seven Billion Dollar Broken Promise

For more than 20 years, our State legislature has promised parents and teachers that during some future session, they would finally and fully fund our public schools. Yet in every session, up to the present day, school funding in Washington state has gotten worse and worse – despite having the strongest State Constitutional guarantee of school funding in the nation. Article IX Section 1 in our State's Constitution states:

“It is the paramount duty of the state to make AMPLE provision for the education of all children residing within its borders without distinction or preference on account of race, culture, caste or sex”.

In the 1980’s our State was 11^th in the nation in school funding. By 1997, after years of cuts, our school funding had fallen to 25^th in the nation. Today, 20 years later, our state is 45^th in the nation in school funding as a percent of income. As a consequence, our kids and teachers are forced to endure the highest class sizes in the nation.

Senate Bill 6093.. A Simple Solution to the School Funding Crisis in Washington State

It is the Paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders…Article 9, Section 1, Washington State Constitution

We in Washington state are blessed to be living in one of the wealthiest states in one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world. Yet our State legislature remains in gridlock. They can not find the money to fully fund our public schools – even when ordered to do so by the Washington Supreme Court! As a consequence, our students are forced to endure some of the highest class sizes and lowest school funding in the nation – harming the future of our children, the future of our economy and the future of our democracy. According to the National Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey (Table 8), Washington State has the third highest class sizes in the nation for elementary school, the second highest class sizes in the nation for middle school and the second highest class sizes in the nation for high school. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_2013314_t1s_007.asp

It hasn't always bee this way. In the 1980s, Washington state was 11^th in the nation in school funding as a percent of income. In this article, we will review when and why school funding plunged here in Washington state. We will then explain why Senate Bill 6093 is a simple and fair solution to our ongoing school funding crisis.

1997 to 2015 18 Years of Billions in Tax Breaks for the Super Rich
Unfortunately, in the 1900s, the state legislature began passing billions of dollars in tax breaks for wealthy corporations. By 1997, school funding in Washington state fell to 25^th in the nation. Then, as we explained in our last article, between 1997 to 2001 school funding in Washington state fell even more – to billions of dollars per year below the national average where it has remained ever since!

We can see from the above graph that the 1997 to 2001 plunge in school funding was caused by a problem in our state rather than a national problem – as national average school funding actually rose after 1997. But money never disappears. It is simply diverted from one place to another. So where did the billions of dollars that should have been spent on public schools go?

Washington State School Construction Shortfall Exceeds 22 Billion Dollars

In previous articles, we described how school operating funds in Washington state have fallen far below the national average - leading to class sizes in Washington state rising to near the highest in the nation. But school operating funding is not the only thing that has plunged in our State. According to OSPI, State support for school construction funding has also disappeared – falling from 66% of actual cost in 1986 to only 10% of actual cost today.

$11 Billion Dollars in School Construction Bond Failures in 11 Years!
School construction funding in our State is now more than one billion dollars per year below the national average… While our State use to pay two thirds of the actual cost of building schools, it now pays only10% - leaving the other 90% of the cost on the backs of local homeowners – and causing local property taxes to skyrocket - leading to more than $11 billion dollars in school construction bonds to go down to defeat during the past 11 years – a rate of more than one billion dollars per year!

How the State Legislature Inflicts a Triple Whammy on Low Income Students

In previous articles, we explained that Washington State is facing a school construction crisis – with a need to build more than $50 billion in new public schools. In this article, we will look at the impact on a particular school district when the State legislature refuses to honor their constitutional obligation to build urgently needed schools. The school district we have chosen is the Highline School District. The impact on these students from the failure of our state legislature to build urgently needed schools has been devastating. We begin with a brief explanation of our State Constitution.

In 1889, the drafters of our Washington State Constitution understood the importance of education to the future of our economy and the future of our democracy. They therefore made the funding of public schools the “paramount” or most important duty of the State legislature. These same wise people had seen how school districts in other states had turned into a system of “rich schools in rich communities and poor schools in poor communities.” They therefore added a second lesser known clause to our State Constitution calling for a “uniform system of public schools.” In recent Supreme Court rulings, the Court has criticized the legislature not only for failing to comply with the full funding of public schools, but also for relying on local levies – which are unconstitutional precisely because they lead to a system of rich schools that can pass local levies and school construction bonds versus poor school districts that cannot pass local levies and school construction bonds.

All of which brings us to the subject of Highline High School. Highline High School is located south of Seattle - just 3 miles from Seatac Airport. It opened in 1924. So it is now about 91 years old and in need of replacement. As was reported in the local news lately, Highline High School now suffers from problems with rats, mold and a host of other health problems. It does not comply with the health code or the earthquake code. In the event of a major earthquake, most of its 1,300 students and their teachers would be killed or injured.

Here is a sign posted on one of the doors at Highline High School:

Recognizing these problems, the Highline School Board attempted to pass a school construction bond to replace the high school in November 2014. When this was defeated, they put it back on the ballot for February 2015 – when it was defeated for a second time. No one opposed to the school bond argued that the high school was not in need of replacement. Instead, they argued that they could not afford it. This fact is supported by the OSPI Property Tax Report which shows that school related property taxes in the Highline School District more than double school related property taxes in the Seattle School District. ($5.66 per thousand versus $2.55 per thousand). This means that for a $400,000 home, the annual school related property tax in Highline is $2,264 versus only $1,020 in Seattle). This is on top of all the other property taxes that are also higher in the Highline School District. http://www.k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/LEV/1415/2010r.pdf

The cause of this huge and unfair difference in school related property taxes is that the Highline School District is a “bedroom” community without a lot of commercial property. Therefore, there is much less property to tax in Highline than there is in Seattle. As a consequence, the amount of property per student is much less in Highline than in Seattle. To be precise, according to OSPI report 1061, Seattle has a per pupil property valuation of $2,695,000. (Nearly two million seven hundred thousand dollars). Meanwhile Highline has a Per pupil valuation of only $677,000 – less than seven hundred thousand dollars. This means that it is four times harder to raise funds to build a new school in the Highline School district than it is in Seattle. http://www.k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/LEV/1415/1061r.pdf

This is precisely the situation the drafters of our State Constitution wanted to avoid when they made a “uniform system of public schools” a part of our State Constitution. They did not want the quality of a child's school to depend on the ZIP CODE the child lived in. Let's take a closer look at how the State legislature turning their backs on the students of the Highline School district has harmed these kids.

Rats, Mold, Unfair High Stakes Tests and the Zip Code Effect
Of the 1300 students at Highline High School, 65% qualify for free and reduced price lunch. 75% are minority students. The graduation rate is only 65%. In 2015, only half of the students passed the Biology End of Course Exam.

While this graduation requirement was waived for the Class of 2015 and Class of 2016, it will be back for the Class of 2017. So already the graduation of 50% of these low income struggling students has been placed at risk. Even worse, less than 5% of these students passed the new SBAC College Entrance English exam – that will also be a graduation requirement for the Class of 2017. Soon 95% of the students at Highline High School will have their graduation placed at risk due to the immoral laws recently passed by our state legislature.

In addition, less than 5% of Highline High School students passed the grossly unfair SBAC math test:

But before you go blaming these low income kids and their teachers, you should be aware that less than 10% of our State legislature can pass this extremely difficult SBAC math test! Nevertheless, this very unfair SBAC math test will be a graduation requirement for the Class of 2019. To see how grossly unfair the SBAC tests are, a year earlier about 70% of Highline High School students passed the previous state English test:

So 70% of the students were passing and at grade level in 2014. But because of the switch to the unfair SBAC tests, now 95% of the students at Highline High school will be labeled as failure and deprived of a high school diploma. It is the same with the SBAC Math test. In 2014, about 70% of Highline students passed the previous State math test:

Yet in 2015, only 5% of these same students could pass the SBAC Math test.

How the State Legislature Inflicts a Triple Whammy on Struggling Low Income Students
In ignoring our State Constitution and defying the orders of our Supreme Court, the State Legislature has first deprived Highline students of safe schools to attend. Second, in refusing to fully fund the operation of our schools, the state legislature deprived these students of the teachers they need to succeed. Third, in forcing students to pass the unfair SBAC Common Core tests in order to graduate, the legislature raised the bar for graduation so high that not even the members of the State legislature could jump over it. So what we have at Highline High School is a group of low income struggling kids who have almost no chance of graduating under current law – and are attending a crumbling 91 year old school infested with rats, mold and other harmful agents – and a school that will collapse in the next major earthquake.

All of this in a community that is already being taxed to death and cannot afford to build a replacement high school. Meanwhile, we have a state legislature that found a way to give Boeing an $8 billion tax break in less than 2 days and gives away over $30 billion in tax breaks to billionaires and wealthy multinational corporations every year.

This situation is beyond disgraceful. It is immoral. It is time for every parent and every teacher to demand that the state legislature comply with our state constitution and fully fund both school operation and construction. The best way to achieve this goal without raising taxes on our poor and middle class is to pass Senate Bill 6093 – which would raise several billion dollars per year simply by repealing a tax break that billionaires use to avoid paying their fair share of state taxes.

We also need to immediately end high stakes testing as a graduation requirement. The best way to do this is to pass Senate Bill 6122 – which not only ends using unfair high stakes tests as a graduation requirement but also reduces the amount of testing to the minimum required by federal law. As always, we welcome your comments and questions.

Regards,
David Spring M. Ed.

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Coalition to Protect our Public Schools