Legislature Passes Budget; Where Does SPS Stand?

About increases for public education from the newly passed budget in the Washington Legislature.
District statement:

The Legislative session in Olympia ended on Sunday, April 28. Due to the Legislature’s actions, beginning in 2020, Seattle will be able to collect $3,000 per student from local, voter-approved funds. This will restore 12.2 million dollars directly to classrooms in the 2019-20 school year, with an estimated total increase in revenue of 16 million dollars and 28 million additional dollars to the district beginning with the 2020-21 school year. We want to thank the Seattle Legislative Delegation for their leadership on restoring this much needed local levy authority.

This restored revenue, along with increased flexibility to use capital funds for maintenance costs, will help us address some of the 40-million-dollar budget shortfall for school year 2019-20 and support restoration of the most critical supports for our students – our school-based staff.

Next year’s school-based cuts including librarians, counselors, and assistant principals, made due to the 2019-20 budget shortfall, will be restored. Other budget reductions, including those to central office, will move forward.

Special Education: The state’s Special Education budget increase is a down payment on a much-needed long term solution. Next year, Seattle Public Schools will receive an additional 2 million dollars for special education. Annually, the district spends 70 million dollars of local levy funds to provide the services our students need. While we appreciate the increase for Special Education, we continue to have grave concerns about the State’s slow pace in fully funding Special Education as is required by law. 

Capital budget: Thanks to the work of our legislative delegation, Seattle Public Schools received 18 million dollars for additional classroom construction at Leschi Elementary and Madison Middle Schools, and funding for HVAC system improvements at North Beach Elementary School in the state’s approved budget.

Education: This budget fulfills the bipartisan promise made by the Legislature to fund health care coverage for school employees through the School Employee Benefits Board (SEBB) program. This investment will cost $328 million in this budget and $837 million over four years.

From reader Kate in Belltown:

$155 million for additional special education funding ($294 million over four years).
$61 million for additional levy assistance for areas with low property values.
$12 million for paraeducator training.
$2.5 million additional funding for student mental health and safety.

Via Crosscut:

Legislative leaders ultimately struck a deal to pass the levy bill that involved stripping out the charter-school language. The compromise also meant adopting stricter accountability measures to try to ensure local levy money doesn't pay for basic education, which is the state's responsibility.

Here's the levy chart for districts.

From WPD Facebook page, reader Richard Pope:

SB 5313 is mainly beneficial to Seattle. They get to increase their local levy a few cents (like $0.55 to $0.61) and get $3,000 per student, instead of $2,500. Other property rich districts already at $2,500 per student don't get to increase at all (so no increase for Bellevue or Mercer Island). Districts presently raising less than $2,500 per student can raise their levy from $1.50 to $2.50. They don't get a penny more in state LEA (local effort assistance for levy equalization), only what they can raise locally. Yakima can only get about $300 per student more with a full $2.50 levy -- so they get to go from $1,500 to $1,800. Not sure why students in Yakima (83.1% minority) deserve to receive so much less funding (even with over four times the local levy rate $2.50 versus $0.61) than Seattle (52.9% minority) ... 

Via the Seattle Times:

For school districts with fewer than 40,000 full-time students, the bill would allow local levies at the lesser of $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed value or $2,500 per student, according to a news release by Senate Democrats.

For districts that exceed 40,000 full-time students, the legislation would allow levies at the lesser of $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed value or $3,000 per student.

Republicans opposed raising the levy caps. They argued that boosting the amount of money school districts could raise locally would set the state up for a return to court over education funding. 

Other bills that passed:

House Bill 1130: Lawmakers unanimously passed this bill to help families of students with disabilities who speak a language other than English. Under HB 1130, school districts must track each family’s preferred language and whether a qualified interpreter joined special education.

House Bill 1599: After years of trying, lawmakers nearly unanimously approved this legislation to eliminate a requirement that students pass high-stakes exams in order to graduate from high school. Under this law, districts have until 2021 to automatically enroll high schoolers in advanced courses depending on their performance in eighth grade.

Senate Bill 5023: In the Seattle school district, teachers have been working to create new curriculum on ethnic studies for preschool through 12th grade. SB 5023 would spread similar materials and resources for grades seven to 12 statewide, while an advisory committee studies how to expand those lessons to elementary schools.

Senate Bill 5324: With unanimous support in both the House and Senate, this bill charges every school to identify one person as responsible for identifying homeless students and connecting them with a district liaison. It also expands a grant program to encourage schools and housing authorities to work together to support homeless youth and students of color.

I note that under the City's plan for the FEPP levy, they seem to think that only SPS has homeless students (and they got the number wrong).  Charters should be just as responsible to serve ALL students as SPS.

Senate Bill 5689: In 2016, the state adopted new rules on health education to include lessons on gender identity and expression, including ways to show respect for all people. But SB 5689 would extend anti-bullying protections for transgender students in public schools, while prohibiting discrimination, harassment or intimidation on the basis of gender identity.

As well, the Legislature has now passed a law about using affirmative action in hiring and enrollment - how will that affect the district?  (I note that there is a movement for a referendum on this issue.)