Eventually, we must presume, the Legislature will arrive at a budget agreement that fully funds public schools and allows state services to continue. With lawmakers in the second overtime of this year’s session, they have until the end of the month to finalize a spending plan and avoid a partial government shutdown.
Regardless of the final outcome — and aside from the hope that it passes muster with the state Supreme Court — it will be essential for lawmakers to keep an eye on the future of schools throughout Washington. Putting forth a haphazard plan that adheres to the court’s ruling in McCleary v. Washington but fails to include a long-term vision will only invite future McCleary-like lawsuits and only exacerbate the issues that have plagued the Legislature since that 2012 decision.
To that end, new state schools Superintendent Chris Reykdal has provided a blueprint. “Our state does not have a long-term strategic vision for our education system,” Reykdal said last week in unveiling a six-year plan for bolstering public education. “We’ve become too content with the idea that our objective is to merely fund the basics, and it has taken a court case just to get to that question of what is basic.”
That query is at the heart of ongoing negotiations among a group of eight lawmakers tasked with meeting the McCleary mandate. With the state constitution declaring that public education is the “paramount duty” of the government, the Supreme Court ruled that local levies should be used only for extras such as sport uniforms, not basics such as teacher salaries. Part of the haggling in Olympia this year has been over the definition of “basic” and how much money is needed — decisions that should have been made five years ago.
