Washington State Legislature - Just Don't Blame our Schools, Okay?
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...