Voters say Legislature has a responsibility to act to prevent school closures, staff layoffs

Majori­ties of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers agree that the state’s schools are under­fund­ed and con­cur that the Leg­is­la­ture has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­stan­tial­ly increase school fund­ing this ses­sion to pre­vent school clo­sures and staff lay­offs, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most recent statewide sur­vey has found.

55% of 874 vot­ers inter­viewed from March 7th-8th said they agreed that Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools are under­fund­ed and we need to raise state rev­enue to ful­ly fund them, while 35% dis­agreed and 10% were not sure.

59% of those sur­veyed sub­se­quent­ly said they agreed that the Leg­is­la­ture has an oblig­a­tion to respond to the fis­cal crises dis­tricts are cur­rent­ly fac­ing by sub­stan­tial­ly increas­ing school fund­ing this ses­sion to pre­vent school clo­sures and staff lay­offs. 36% dis­agreed and 5% said that they were not sure.

The Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion declares that it is the state’s “para­mount duty” to “amply pro­vide” for the edu­ca­tion of all youth resid­ing with­in its borders.

These find­ings demon­strate that vot­ers con­tin­ue to under­stand this oblig­a­tion and expect their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to as well. Yet the bud­gets cur­rent­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion in Wash­ing­ton’s state­house fall far short of amply pro­vid­ing for our schools, which con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the fall­out from the COVID-19 pandemic.

With no help on the hori­zon, dis­tricts are prepar­ing to make deep cuts.

Like Belle­vue:

The Belle­vue School Board has vot­ed to con­sol­i­date two ele­men­tary schools, which is a mod­i­fied rec­om­men­da­tion in respect to the dis­tric­t’s ear­li­er plans of con­sol­i­da­tion. Three board mem­bers vot­ed yes and two abstained.

Ear­li­er this year, the dis­trict pro­posed con­sol­i­dat­ing three ele­men­tary schools to save costs due to low enroll­ment, a trend expect­ed to con­tin­ue. The dis­trict is also faced with a $31 mil­lion short­fall for next year’s budget.

“In Octo­ber 2022 it became clear that enroll­ment would not go back to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, as a result of low­er birth rates, high­er hous­ing costs, more edu­ca­tion­al options for fam­i­lies includ­ing pri­vate schools, low­er immi­gra­tion lev­els, and fam­i­lies mov­ing to more afford­able areas. The impact of the drop in enroll­ment will hit the district’s finan­cial posi­tion in the 2023–2024 school year. The mag­ni­tude of the sit­u­a­tion serves as the ratio­nale behind con­sol­i­da­tion con­sid­er­a­tions,” inter­im super­in­ten­dent Dr. Art Jarvis wrote on the dis­tric­t’s web­site on March 8th.

Or Seat­tle:

Dur­ing a bud­get work ses­sion Tues­day night [Feb­ru­ary 28th], Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools announced some staff has been noti­fied they may lose their jobs while address­ing a crit­i­cal bud­get deficit.

Accord­ing to the dis­trict, its “struc­tur­al deficit” has grown to $131 mil­lion. The fis­cal year 2022–23 SPS bud­get is based on $82 mil­lion of one-time funding.

“This week…we’ve issued some noti­fi­ca­tions to employ­ees about they’re being con­sid­ered for ‘RIF’ and dis­place­ment so that is hap­pen­ing,” said Dr. Brent Jones, SPS superintendent.

“We’re in that phase right now.”

The dis­trict said the pro­ject­ed deficit was caused by a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing the expi­ra­tion of one-time state and fed­er­al resources from the Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary School Emer­gency Relief Fund (ESSER).

Or Olympia:

The Olympia School Dis­trict joins with sev­er­al dis­tricts across the state, forced to make bud­get cuts for the upcom­ing school year.

Olympia schools are fac­ing an esti­mat­ed $11.5 mil­lion short­fall. School board mem­bers say that dif­fi­cult cuts are ahead.

Some of the cuts include reduc­ing the para-edu­ca­tor staff by 26%, increas­ing class sizes for all stu­dents, and elim­i­nat­ing art teach­ers at each ele­men­tary school.

“I’m wor­ried for my kids’ edu­ca­tion,” says Romeo, an Olympia parent.

Par­ent, Sara, agrees. “It’s nerve-wrack­ing when you hear about it for our kids.”

Oth­er pro­posed cuts include reduc­ing bus routes and bus mon­i­tors, elim­i­nat­ing sev­er­al social work­ers, and pos­si­bly elim­i­nat­ing mid­dle school sports.

These cuts will have neg­a­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions for every­one: stu­dents, par­ents, teach­ers, edu­ca­tion sup­port pro­fes­sion­als, and the wider community.

But they will nev­er­the­less be imposed if Wash­ing­ton’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run Leg­is­la­ture does not change course in the next few days. 

Because of how Wash­ing­ton’s sys­tem of com­mon schools is struc­tured, with gov­er­nance large­ly decen­tral­ized across 295 school dis­tricts, it’s easy to fall into the trap as a state elect­ed offi­cial of think­ing that school fund­ing is pri­mar­i­ly a local mat­ter, espe­cial­ly giv­en dis­tricts’ author­i­ty to set their own budgets.

But the Con­sti­tu­tion is crys­tal clear: it’s not only a state respon­si­bil­i­ty, it’s the state’s most impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ty. Its para­mount duty, as mentioned.

The Leg­is­la­ture has a long and sor­ry his­to­ry of fail­ing to car­ry out the state’s sacred Arti­cle IX respon­si­bil­i­ty. That dere­lic­tion of duty is what led to the land­mark McCleary law­suit, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Leg­is­la­ture was fail­ing Wash­ing­ton’s kids. For sev­er­al years, the Leg­is­la­ture pret­ty much ignored the Court’s rul­ing, caus­ing the jus­tices to hold the state in con­tempt.

Final­ly, dur­ing the 2017 ses­sion — the most recent year in which Repub­li­cans con­trolled the Sen­ate — leg­is­la­tors adopt­ed a so-called “McCleary fix” which belat­ed­ly addressed some of the long­stand­ing prob­lems with school fund­ing in Wash­ing­ton — but def­i­nite­ly not all. The exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive branch­es then urged the Supreme Court to dis­pose of the McCleary case, which it did in 2018.

Wash­ing­ton’s school fund­ing issues have sad­ly persisted.

Though the Leg­is­la­ture has com­mend­ably levied a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to direct addi­tion­al fund­ing to the Edu­ca­tion Lega­cy Trust (an act the Supreme Court just upheld), it has not giv­en our K‑12 pub­lic schools the resources they need to ful­fill the state’s oblig­a­tions to its youngest residents.

This is true not just in terms of oper­at­ing sup­port, but cap­i­tal invest­ments, too. One of Wash­ing­ton’s tiny rur­al school dis­tricts, Wahki­akum, is suing the state, in what is some­thing of a sequel to McCleary. The dis­trict con­tends it should­n’t be forced to come up with the funds to mod­ern­ize its facil­i­ties on its own.

At reg­u­lar inter­vals through­out the past sev­en years, NPI has been ask­ing vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton how they feel about school fund­ing, and we have always found a major­i­ty in agree­ment that our schools are under­fund­ed and that state rev­enue ought to be increased to ful­ly fund them, even after the “McCleary fix.” Here’s our ques­tion, the most recent respons­es, and the respons­es going back to 2016:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree, or strong­ly dis­agree with the fol­low­ing state­ment: Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools are under­fund­ed, and we need to raise state rev­enue to ful­ly fund them?

ANSWERS:

• Agree: 55%
  • Strong­ly agree: 38%
  • Some­what agree: 17%
• Dis­agree: 35% 
  • Some­what dis­agree: 13%
  • Strong­ly dis­agree: 22%
• Not sure: 10%

RESPONSES OVER TIME: 2016–2023

Ask­ing the exact same ques­tion about school fund­ing in our polls allows us to track pub­lic sen­ti­ment over time, but does­n’t allow us to offer up-to-date con­text, which is why we also posed this ques­tion to our respondents:

QUESTION: School dis­tricts across Wash­ing­ton say that they are fac­ing fis­cal crises due to declin­ing enroll­ment, fall­out from the pan­dem­ic, and the state’s ongo­ing fail­ure to amply fund the edu­ca­tion of all youth, even after the dis­po­si­tion of the McCleary court case. Dis­tricts like Belle­vue and Seat­tle are look­ing at clos­ing schools or lay­ing off staff to address loom­ing bud­get short­falls. Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree, or strong­ly dis­agree that the Leg­is­la­ture has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­stan­tial­ly increase school fund­ing this ses­sion to pre­vent school clo­sures and staff layoffs?

ANSWERS:

• Agree: 59%
  • Strong­ly agree: 42%
  • Some­what agree: 17%
• Dis­agree: 36% 
  • Some­what dis­agree: 12%
  • Strong­ly dis­agree: 24%
• Not sure: 5%

Our sur­vey of 874 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, March 7th through Wednes­day, March 8th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and online answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Last ses­sion, after NPI unveiled polling that showed that vot­ers con­sid­er upgrad­ing our seis­mi­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble school build­ings to be a state respon­si­bil­i­ty, the Leg­is­la­ture unan­i­mous­ly passed a school seis­mic safe­ty grant pro­gram and pro­vid­ed a mod­est chunk of fund­ing in the cap­i­tal bud­get to sup­port it.

It was only a first step, but it nev­er­the­less rep­re­sent­ed impor­tant progress.

This year’s cap­i­tal bud­get — which is not yet final but is mov­ing along in the leg­isla­tive process — some­how has few­er dol­lars for the school seis­mic safe­ty grant pro­gram than last year’s. Cou­pled with the insuf­fi­cient lev­els of fund­ing for dis­tricts in the oper­at­ing bud­get, we are on the verge of going back­wards on school fund­ing in Wash­ing­ton State. That’s not what Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want.

Vot­ers last year sent a mes­sage to Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive lead­ers, sev­er­al of whom had pub­licly fret­ted about los­ing seats amidst the Repub­li­cans’ “red wave” nar­ra­tive: we like what you’re doing and we want you to do more.

That’s why they sent larg­er — yes, larg­er — Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties to Olympia in a year when Repub­li­cans had delu­sions of repeat­ing 1994 and win­ning majori­ties in both cham­bers. Our research, which antic­i­pat­ed a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic show­ing in leg­isla­tive races, now finds that big majori­ties sup­port a wealth tax on huge for­tunes and a ful­ly fund­ed uni­ver­sal, no-cost school meals pro­gram, as well as the sub­stan­tial increase for K‑12 schools dis­cussed above.

Right now, the Leg­is­la­ture seems on the verge of fail­ing to deliv­er any of that.

There’s still an oppor­tu­ni­ty for lead­er­ship. The ses­sion isn’t over yet and the bud­gets are not final. Our team implores the Leg­is­la­ture to lis­ten to the vot­ers. Don’t Sine Die and go home with­out tak­ing care of Wash­ing­ton’s kids. Don’t force aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures on Wash­ing­ton’s K‑12 schools. Instead, work togeth­er to make the invest­ments that our youth and their fam­i­lies need to suc­ceed and thrive.