Opinion: K-12 Washington state education funding overview

Washington's K-12 education funding remains a challenge 13 years after the McCleary decision, with rising costs and unfunded mandates straining school budgets. — Larry Roe and Dick Rylander. Washington’s K-12 education funding remains a challenge 13 years after the McCleary decision, with rising costs and unfunded mandates straining school budgets.

In the final of a three-part series, Dick Rylander and Larry Roe take a look at where we are 13 years after McCleary decision

Larry Roe and Dick Rylander
for Clark County Today

If you haven’t read Parts 1 and 2 of this series for background please do.

Thirteen years after the McCleary decision, we are back where we started on amply funding education. The claims of school districts across the state are that we are failing to provide sufficient appropriations to fund staffing, transportation, and materials/supplies/insurance.

Many new mandates have been added to the Revised Code of Washington (RCW), the Washington Administrative Code (WAC), the policy opinions of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), and the policies and procedures of our local school districts. One example is illustrative of the (un)intended consequences of legislative efforts:

RCW 28A.155.020: Finding—2015 c 206: “The legislature finds that there is no educational or therapeutic benefit to children from physically restraining or isolating them as part of their public school programs when not necessary for immediate safety. The use of seclusion or restraints in non-emergency situations poses significant physical and psychological danger to students and school staff. The legislature declares that it is the policy of the state of Washington to prohibit the planned use of aversive interventions, to promote positive interventions when a student with disabilities is determined to need specially designed instruction to address behavior, and to prohibit schools from physically restraining or isolating any student except when the student’s behavior poses an imminent likelihood of serious harm to that student or another person.” [ 2015 c 206 s 1.]

We believe that everyone would agree with the legislature’s finding that there is no educational or therapeutic benefit to the individual student from physically restraining or isolating them. However, we believe that all educators would agree that there is a threshold for the behavior of individual students beyond which there is a significant, measurable, negative impact on the teacher’s ability to control their classroom and hence, educate of the rest of the students.

There are other mandates that drive additional spending (and growth in staffing costs above inflation):

House Bill 1207 (2023-2024) addresses harassment, intimidation, bullying, and discrimination requires training for staff and administrative demonstration of compliance.
House Bill 1377 (2017-2018) defines the role of school counselors, social workers, and psychologists in K-12 schools. Administratively, it charters the Professional Educators Standards Board to create certification standards for these positions and add sections to RCW28A.320 and RCW28A.410 to define the mandate. The school psychologists are chartered to define and drive implementation of social emotional learning (SEL).
Senate Bill 5044 (2021-2022) defines the terms and concepts for DEI and led to the codification of the mandate in RCW 28A.415.443 and 28A.415.445. This sets training and reporting requirements for all school districts to ensure that the districts are focused on removing DEI barriers to learning for their students.
The legislature enacted Senate Bill 5395 in 2020 to institute “comprehensive sexual health education”. This significantly expanded the requirements for instructional time for sexual health education (with an associated reduction of other, core educational topics) and an increased requirement for administration. This is an underfunded mandate.

Senate Bill 5395 is an outlier in the legislation on educational policy. Legislatures are partisan by design. Through the debate of partisan views, our legislature is tasked to provide a framework for public education that satisfies all elements of our state constitution. One of those elements is that public school policies are not the result of partisan control or influence (WA constitution, Article IX, section 4). In the case of SB5395, not only was there only one party supporting the legislation through majority report recommendations, the bill passed with votes from only one political party. That would seem to meet a standard for partisan control or influence.

Our supreme court has a history of supporting the implementation of progressive policies (example: declaring that a capital gains tax is an excise tax). The supreme court was restricted in the McCleary decision of ruling only on section 1 of article IX of the state constitution because the parents and the state chose to restrict their competition to the priority of funding for education. The question of how much latitude the state has to define a basic education was not included in the McCleary decision. Adherence to SB 5395 would seem to be an appropriate choice to test the enforce-ability of the prohibition against partisan control or influence in the public schools. We believe that the viability of public school financing depends on clarifying this issue.

Finally, there are federal mandates for education in all public schools. The U.S. Congress has added many admirable goals for public schools to deliver: “no child left behind”, the elimination of racial disparities in educational outcomes, accommodation for disabilities to eliminate impact on educational outcomes. The U.S. Department of Education provided funds to help schools work towards these goals. However, federal courts have not been open to limitations on how much should be spent to try to provide these opportunities for individual students. As an example the Vancouver Public School District is spending $530,000 in 2024-2025 to deliver an educational environment consistent with their assessment of this mandate for one of the 22,000 students enrolled in the District. (That’s right…$530,000 for just one (1) student) The result has been that the vast majority of the recent unsupported spending has been for special education.

Update: Based on Presidential Executive Orders recently issued programs previously funded in the “social” area may no longer be legal nor fundable.

Revisions to the law (RCW changes) drive ever higher spending in many school districts. The cycle is: implement legislative change, fund the change with local levy money whose use is flexibly defined (note that this reduces levy money use for enrichment), demand that the legislature raise more money for the new definition of “basic” education, and repeat.

We propose the following questions for the electorate:

How much latitude should the legislature have in expanding the definition of a “basic” education? Note that section four of the state constitutional charter for public schools prohibits partisan control or influence in their operation of public schools. Perhaps our supreme court could restrict the legislature’s authority to define a basic education to those elements with significant support from a majority of partisan groups?
Should the local levies have specific funding aims and controls on spending so that they are used for enrichment suited for their districts and cannot be used as a tool in the expansion of the scope of basic education?
How do we convince the WA Supreme Court that the result of a local levy n election can be to “spend within our means” without being viewed as a “whim”?

School funding is a complex morass. The Washington Supreme Court in the McCleary decision noted that the legally required accounting of actual school district spending (form F-196) does not define how much money is being spent from different sources on basic education (Note 2). It’s in the best interest for those who want a lot of government oversight and involvement NOT to have details and data. For those who want more focus on results and core education the present state of funding prevents that. What do you want?

Notes:

Jan 21st we emailed WASA (Washington State Superintendents Association) asking for access to their newsletter as well as a list of unfunded mandates. WASA responded that they will not share their newsletter and they do NOT have (nor so they maintain) a list of mandated programs.

On Jan 23rd we filed a Public Record Request (PRR) with OSPI asking for a report on all types of mandates affecting k-12 education in WA State. They responded that they do not have nor do they keep a list of mandates much less how they are/aren’t funded.

We did reach out to the school district level and could not find any evidence of any mandate list. We were given a link to a website (WA School Funding) that appears to be run by WASA and supports their views and interpretations with examples they believe are relevant examples. So, this article is our best attempt to open a dialogue on the topic. If various parties claim mandates are unfunded or underfunded but can’t provide a comprehensive list with numbers their claims are subject to scrutiny.

From the Washington State Supreme Court McCleary vs Washington (Jan, 2012): “To counter Plaintiffs’ evidence that schools relied heavily on local levies to fill the gap in funding for the basic education program, the State called Calvin Brodie, the director of School Apportionment and Financial Services for OSPI. Mr. Brodie testified that the annual accounting record for school districts, the F-196 form, did not reveal whether schools actually used local funds for basic education program expenditures, as the form did not track which funds went to which programs. 19 VRP (Oct. 8, 2009) at 4210, 4217, 4258, 4260. Still, Mr. Brodie admitted that, apart from the F-196 form, he believed that local funds were used to fund activities that arguably fell under the State’s responsibility. Id. at 4351. Another OSPI official testified that, even though the accounting records did not detail which funds went to which programs, it was generally known that schools used local funds for basic education program expenditures. 20 VRP (Oct. 12, 2009) at 4541.

The fact that local levy funds have been at least in part supporting the basic education program is inescapable. As of 2010, all school districts have a levy lid of 28 percent, and 90 grandfathered districts maintain levy lids as high as 38 percent. Laws of 2010, ch. 237. The trial evidence does not show that increases in local funding went strictly to providing “enhancements” to “basic education.” Instead, the increase in school districts’ levy capacity over the years reflects the growing need to fill the gap between state allocations and the actual cost of providing the program of basic education {Recent data from the Levy and Local Effort Assistance Technical Working Group confirms that levy dollars increasingly make up for shortfalls in the State’s allocation for basic education. The working group’s report estimates that school districts

expend 54 percent of their levy money to fund salaries and benefits after receiving the state allocation, another 21 percent to make up for shortfalls in NERC allocations, and 6 percent to backfill student transportation. Wash. Office of Fin. Mgmt., Final Report, Levy and Local Effort Assistance Technical Working Group 41-43 (July 12, 2011), available at http://www.ofm.wa.gov/levy/report/ report.pdf }. Reliance on levy funding to finance basic education was unconstitutional 30 years ago in the Seattle School District, and it is unconstitutional now.”

Action:

K-12 education in Washington state is a complex morass. We need to demand that the legislature research every mandated program for K-12. They need to create a document that shows what it costs to implement and maintain all mandates. This document must also show how much money is provided. This a “must” before we can have a discussion and debate about the appropriateness and funding sources.