Until the Washington Legislature abides by the state constitutional mandate to fully fund basic education, it’s up to local school districts to generate revenue through maintenance and operations tax levies. By law, up to 24 percent of a school district’s operating budget can be funded through a levy.
Eight Clark County school districts are asking voters to approve levies in a Feb. 9 election. Ballots will be mailed Wednesday.
The Columbian is generally supportive of school levies, largely because they typically are replacement funding mechanisms. In each of the eight districts this year, the request to voters is, essentially, a continuation of expiring levies that voters previously approved.
Some school districts, such as Evergreen and Vancouver, are asking for increases in total levy dollars, but slumping home values mean that many homeowners will pay lower taxes in 2012.
More information about the replacement maintenance and operations levies can be found elsewhere in today’s Columbian. And, the school districts have levy information available on their respective Web sites.
Our “Yes” recommendation carries a few caveats. Because of the devastating recession, there will be more pressure on school levies, and there is good reason for that pressure. School board members and administrators must remember that they aren’t the only ones battling difficult economic times. Taxpayers also face the same challenges, and in the cases of the newly unemployed, that challenge is even more severe than what school officials must confront.
We also wonder if now is an appropriate time for some districts to call for an increase in total levy dollars. Educators will say, “Our costs have gone up.” Voters would respond, “Our costs have gone up as well. But we didn’t get raises.”
If voters reject the levies in the districts that are asking for more money, those district officials should prepare to ask again, with no increase.
Such a levy defeat now appears less likely than several years ago, at least statistically, because state voters in 2007 approved removing the 60 percent supermajority and subjecting operating levies to a 50 percent majority. (Construction bonds still require supermajority approval.)
In the context of public schools, we agree with the notion that a majority of voters ought to get their way. That’s especially applicable with levy funding, which pays for the crucial costs: heating and cooling schools, transportation, teacher training for such duties as Advanced Placement courses. Other funding needs are less inclusive but still vital to select student groups: extracurricular activities, after-school activities and more specialized services and programs.
The News Tribune in Tacoma correctly observed in a recent editorial that school levies “make all the difference between healthy school districts and distressed ones. … The failure of a levy — it takes two consecutive rejections to permanently kill one — throws a district into the equivalent of shock. The remaining funding must be devoted to survival-level operations.” Such a condition occurred in Battle Ground when voters defeated successive levies in 2006. The next year, Battle Ground voters approved a three-year levy that expires this year.
Voters are encouraged to thoroughly research this year’s school levies and prepare to vote when ballots arrive in the mail this week.
