Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update:  State Superintendent Dorn's filing . Interview with Summer Stinson of Washington's Paramount Duty, Rep. Reuven Carlyle and Superintendent Dorn on Q13 yesterday. Dorn is pushing for all kind of answers including, yes, closing down schools in 2017.  (That would give the legislature a whole year - a year - to get this done which, by their own requirements, they should have it all done before school year 2017-2018.)

Kudos to Peter Callaghan at the News Tribune for his column on what the Supreme Court should do to nudge the Legislature along to enact McCleary .  (If you read the column, you'll see I'm being sarcastic about "nudge.")  Out the gate: “Do we look stupid? We may have faults individually and collectively, but we’re not stupid. We ruled unanimously in January 2012 that the state is in violation of the rights of its children to an amply funded education. We pointed out the words — again — in the state constitution that say education is the state’s ‘paramount duty.’ No more whining: Rather than listen to you complain about this court’s order, let us remind you how accommodating we’ve been. We let you decide how to define basic education. We let you determine how much all that costs. We let you create the funding formulas and the timelines. And we gave you six years to do it! Get it done: “What follows is what we call a ‘court order.’ That means it isn’...

From OSPI : State Superintendent Randy Dorn today released a draft of a bill that would move Washington state toward the full funding of basic education in the event that the Legislature fails to do so by Jan. 1, 2018.  Among other things, the bill calls for a one percent increase in sales tax, an increase in state property tax to $3.60 per $1,000 of assessed value and a decrease in local levy authority – the so-called “levy swap.”  OSPI estimates the bill will increase education funding by $7.5 billion in the 2019-21 biennium.  “This bill is a blunt but necessary instrument,” Dorn said. “A general increase in the sales tax is not the best solution to this problem. But something has to be done, and passage of this bill will, I hope, spur the legislature into action.”  About the bill Dorn’s proposal makes it clear that the intent of the Legislature is to create a process that will comply with the McCleary decision. The compliance consists of th...

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...

Thanks to reader, Greg Linden, for this link to GeekWire and their assessment that yes, Washington State does suck when it comes to K-12 and higher ed public education.  Technology Alliance Chair, Cheryl Vedoe - “It seems you can grow an innovation economy by largely relying on imported talent. And that’s what we are doing — relying on imported talent. The question for us to consider is as a state: Is that really what we want to do? Don’t we want those children who grow up here in Washington, our own citizens, to have a fair shot at the jobs that we are creating here?” Meanwhile this is what Zillow co-founder, Rich Barton, has to say (GeekWire points out that he likes charter schools and supports a state income tax.)   We are a high-tech state. We are a wealthy state, and I can’t believe that’s going on. And I don’t really understand why,” said Barton, referencing some of the charts shown during Vedoe’s presentation. “Many of the people in this room probably send their k...