{"id":1993,"date":"2019-03-01T18:16:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T18:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/?p=1993"},"modified":"2024-10-15T22:02:18","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T22:02:18","slug":"washington-is-a-great-example-of-what-not-to-do-with-education-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/03\/01\/washington-is-a-great-example-of-what-not-to-do-with-education-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington is a Great Example of What Not to Do With Education Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After dumping almost another $1\nbillion into funding for education, why do the local school districts in\nWashington State keep needing more money?&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/app.leg.wa.gov\/billsummary?BillNumber=2242&amp;Year=2017\">House Bill 2242<\/a>,\npassed in 2017,&nbsp;effectively ended the drawn out&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.courts.wa.gov\/appellate_trial_courts\/SupremeCourt\/?fa=supremecourt.McCleary_Education\">McCleary<\/a>&nbsp;decision.&nbsp; The bill authorized\nthe state to raise local property taxes to increase school funding and called\nfor a reduction of levy funding to make the funding for property-poor districts\nmore equitable.&nbsp; The property tax increase went into effect last year and\nthe levy reduction goes into effect this year.&nbsp; Thus, for one year,\nproperty-rich districts had a windfall of funding since they received the new\nproperty tax revenues and retained their levy funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Knowing that districts had excess\nfunds for one year, a number of new contracts were signed, many of only one\nyear duration, that provided school employees with double-digit raises.&nbsp;\nThese increases effectively used up the excess funds.&nbsp; Now, with the levy\nfunds declining, districts are lobbying both their communities and the\nLegislature to increase funding so they can balance their budgets.&nbsp;\n&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the newly introduced&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/app.leg.wa.gov\/billsummary?BillNumber=5313&amp;Year=2019&amp;Initiative=false\">Senate Bill 5313<\/a>&nbsp;is intended to maintain the state-wide property tax\nincrease while eliminating the cap on local levies.&nbsp; Basically, the\nschools in property-rich districts, and their unions, want their cake and eat\nit, too.&nbsp; If they get away with it, we\u2019ll be right back to where we\nstarted, only education costs will have dramatically increased. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Washington Policy Center\u2019s\nDirector for Education, Liv Finne, states in her&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpolicy.org\/publications\/detail\/testimony-on-sb-5313-to-increase-property-taxes-and-re-introduce-inequities-in-school-funding\">testimony<\/a>&nbsp;at\nthe state legislature,&nbsp;<em>\u201cSB 5313 would turn back the clock and\nre-introduce inequity in school funding, to the benefit of wealthy school\ndistricts, leaving students in property-poor districts with proportionately\nless money, exactly the unfairness problem the McCleary case was supposed to\nsolve.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regardless of how this turns out,\nincreasing spending isn\u2019t the answer to fixing education. As Don Nielsen states\nin his book,&nbsp;<em>Every School, \u201cThough substantial increases in funding of\neducation have occurred in the past several decades, student test scores are\nstill about the levels they were in 1970.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a classic\nexample of dealing with a problem, but not focusing on the source of the\nproblem. The problem is not that the state hasn\u2019t set up sufficient funding to\ndeal with basic education. It has and the courts ruled in its favor. The\nproblem is that that many children are not learning in the present system and more\nmoney is not going to change that.&nbsp; We have a system problem, not a\nfunding problem. Until legislators and voters understand that, we will always\nbe trying to solve the problem by spending more money.&nbsp;&nbsp; It has never\nworked, and it will never work.&nbsp; Washington State is about to prove that\npoint again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After dumping almost another $1 billion into funding for education, why do the local school districts in Washington State keep needing more money?&nbsp;House Bill 2242, passed in 2017,&nbsp;effectively ended the drawn out&nbsp;McCleary&nbsp;decision.&nbsp; The bill authorized the state to raise local property taxes to increase school funding and called for a reduction of levy funding to make the funding for property-poor districts more equitable.&nbsp; The property tax increase went into effect last year and the levy reduction goes into effect this year.&nbsp; Thus, for one year, property-rich districts had a windfall of funding since they received the new property tax revenues and retained their levy funding. Knowing that districts had excess funds for one year, a number of new contracts were<a class=\"ellipsis article-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/03\/01\/washington-is-a-great-example-of-what-not-to-do-with-education-funding\/\"><span> Read More &rsaquo;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":2040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1062],"class_list":["post-1993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-policy"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Bailey Takacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1993"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}