Seattle Schools Community Forum

Two good political reads today. First, from Publicola , the explanation of how we don't have enough money for McCleary but boy, do our legislators have enough money to continue tax breaks.  It's just ridiculous and wrong.  From their story(bold mine): Following up on a legislative session in which lawmakers fell $420 million short on funding specific line items to meet the Washington State Supreme Court's McCleary mandate to fund basic K-12 education, the Joint Legislative Audit Review Committee (JLARC), a bipartisan task force of legislators that evaluates the worthiness of tax breaks, signed off on more than $500 million in expenses that are vague and unclear. Why spend the full court-mandated $141.6 million on school buses, $597.1 million on materials, supplies, and operating costs, and $219.2 million on reduced class sizes, I guess, when you can give money away for ambiguous policy goals? (The most recent budget spends about $1 billion on K-12 rath...

Apparently there is some confusion out there about how education dollars are spent, particularly among conservatives. Over at Crosscut, they have been doing some good reporting on this year's legislative session.  (FYI, it is supposed to end on Sunday but odds are they will not reach agreement on the budget and have a (costly) special session.) Reporter John Stang's article about the Dems and what they are trimming from their budget was useful reading.  One quote that is pertinent to this thread was this one: "We don't need new taxes. We've got plenty of money for education," said Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama. "We have to have the courage to fund education first and say 'no' to the other people," Orcutt said. Really Rep. Orcutt?  And we will have more for education by taking away from public health including homeless people?   That's one way to find the money. Here's an opposing view: We're asking some businesses to...