SEATTLE — Lawmakers met Wednesday to talk about the next steps toward answering the Washington Supreme Court’s McCleary decision on education funding.
Before a committee met to discuss the Legislature’s annual report to the Supreme Court about their progress toward fully funding basic education, another group gathered to talk about collecting data from school districts to help them decide how to do that.
The data will help lawmakers figure out how much teacher pay and other school salaries are paid for with local levy dollars, an issue the Supreme Court raised in its 2012 McCleary decision.
Lawmakers say that data will give them a more concrete figure to use when they debate how much money the state’s budget will need to increase to fully pay the cost of basic education.
The Supreme Court has held the state in contempt over the Legislature’s failure to make a plan for resolving the remaining issues over paying the full costs of basic education, while ending its overreliance on local tax levies.
The Education Funding Task Force learned in a presentation from the Office of Program Research that about 20 percent or $13,500 of the average state teacher salary is paid by money that is not directly allocated by the state for teacher salaries. The gap for administrative salaries is much bigger, almost 50 percent at $54,422. The pay gap for other school staff is about a quarter or $11,292.
Lawmakers want to know exactly where the money comes from and whether it pays for basic education or enrichment.
Staff member Jessica Herrell said the answers are complicated, and that’s why lawmakers need the information.
Some of the money comes from local levies and some comes from reallocation of dollars from one category to another, Herrell explained.
The Legislature passed a bill during the 2016 session asking for this data and outlining how they expect to finish the work assigned by the Supreme Court.
The bill established the Education Funding Task Force and tasked it with figuring out how much money the state needs to find to finish paying the full cost of basic education. It instructs the 2017 Legislature to replace some local levy spending with state dollars and finish the work called for in the McCleary decision.
