SEATTLE — Everyone involved in education at the state level has a short list for the 2008 Legislature. But almost all the wishes involve spending, despite the governor’s and the Democratic leadership’s desire to leave money in the bank.
Education advocates hope to focus the discussion at the session that begins Monday on making up lost ground on teacher pay, picking a location for a new University of Washington campus in Snohomish County, paying for the governor’s proposal to improve campus security, and fixing the way the state pays for K-12 education before a judge steps in.
One of the hottest education topics of any year — the Washington Assessment of Student Learning — probably won’t come up much after last year’s decision to delay requiring passage of the math and science WASLs to graduate from high school.
Any ideas that involve spending more money on new projects won’t get a friendly reception, said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam.
“We may spend money a little bit differently than the governor, but we are going to hold the line,” Kessler said. Being prudent this year could prevent cuts in the future if the state’s economy declines, she added.
“We have to save money. We really don’t have much of a choice, unless we want to have red ink flowing all over.”
The top two priorities of the state teacher’s union — restoring a 3 percent cost-of-living increase from 2003-2005 and shrinking K-3 classes to a 17 students per teacher or smaller — would cost an estimated $170 million.
“The state has a substantial surplus. I understand it’s been described as a historic surplus. I think we can achieve our goals and still leave the state with about a billion dollars,” said Mary Lindquist, president of the Washington Teachers Association.
The WEA wants to replace the money teachers lost when Initiative 732, which mandates annual cost-of-living increases for teachers, was suspended to balance the 2003 biennial budget.
“I think it’s important that our legislators listen to what the voters had to say about the salary initiative,” Lindquist said of I-732, which was approved in 2000 by 63 percent of voters.
Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said she expects some budget adjustments will be made this year — she supports the restoring the teacher cost-of-living increases — but expressed more interest in continuing the discussion about how the state pays for education.
A task force has been assigned to report on funding alternatives before the 2009 Legislature convenes, but McAuliffe said some adjustments could be made this year.
The state uses sales, business and state property taxes to pay 84.3 percent of what it costs to educate Washington’s 1 million school children. The other 15.7 percent comes from local levies and some federal money, primarily for education of special-needs children.
Most state dollars go to teacher salaries. The state also matches local bond money for school construction.
Critics say the state’s formulas for distributing money are outdated. A lawsuit filed by a coalition of teachers, parents, community groups and school districts wants the state to cover 100 percent of the cost to educate children in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson said she would support using a teacher pay increase to even out some of the disparities in the system, instead of giving the same raise to every school employee. Uneven teacher and staff pay is one of the issues assigned to the task force to resolve.
Bergeson said she would oppose any attempts to weaken the state’s graduation requirements, including a delay of passing the reading and writing sections of the WASL. The class of 2008 is the first group required to pass those sections to graduate. Last year, the Legislature delayed the math and science tests as graduation requirements until 2013.
The governor’s proposed supplementary budget allows $65 million for education, including $14.3 million for security improvement on college and university campuses; $433,000 to improve safety at preschools; a 0.8 percent raise for teachers, estimated to cost $31.2 million; $1.1 million toward a new northern campus of the University of Washington; and more than $17.5 million to help students struggling to meet state standards, such as English language learners and those with learning disabilities.
The Legislature is supposed to decide this year where the new Snohomish County UW campus should go. A Seattle architecture firm picked an Everett site as the best of four alternatives, but a lively debate is expected in Olympia.
McAuliffe said she thought both higher education and preschool would get more attention this year. The 2006 Legislature approved a new cabinet-level department of early learning, which has developed a public-private partnership — with substantial financial support from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation — to give a quality preschool education to all children under age 5.
“We have a new agency. We have to look at how it’s being built,” she said, adding that she wants to make sure the state is doing everything it can to help kids with disabilities such as dyslexia or autism as early in life as possible.
State PTA President Laura Bay wonders how schools would pay for the state Board of Education’s plan to add another year of math to graduation requirements. She said the state needs to adjust the money going to schools when requirements change.
Bay said she’d like to have school funding issues resolved this year instead of waiting until 2009 after the task force finishes its work, but added, “We need to make sure it’s not a Band-Aid fix.”
She has at least one ally among Republicans.
Rep. Glenn Anderson, R-Fall City, doesn’t like being in a holding pattern concerning how to pay for education.
“It really is a political will question,” Anderson said. “We know what the fundamental issues are, and the most likely remedies. And we’re just going to sit on it?”
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