By Walker Orenstein
The News Tribune
The McCleary saga continues.
Washington’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday lawmakers must do more to meet the long-running education decision by a Sept. 1, 2018 deadline, despite billions in new state spending and other reforms approved for K-12 schools by the Legislature earlier this year.
The 2017 changes — along with others since the original landmark 2012 order — appear to be enough to meet the court’s demands in fully funding public schools but simply won’t come soon enough, the justices said in the Wednesday ruling.
In response, the court will retain jurisdiction in the case and ask for full implementation of the K-12 schools plan by the 2018 deadline. The state also will remain in contempt of court and keep paying a $100,000-a-day fine over lawmaker’s failure to achieve full compliance with McCleary.
As one of the last remaining tasks to meet McCleary, the court had ordered the state to take on the full cost of teacher and other school administrator salaries that have been paid for in part by local levies for years.
In the 2017 legislative session, lawmakers raised a state property tax to do so, while restricting how much local levies can be raised for basic education. Altogether, lawmakers in 2017 approved $7.3 billion in new state spending over four years as part of its tax shift aimed at satisfying the court order and boosting money for K-12 schools.
The Legislature’s changes are phased in, however, as most of the money is expected to kick in for the 2019-2020 school year.
The court said it agrees with the state that the remaining details of the program for full state funding of K-12 education “are in place.” Just not in time.
“The program of basic education cannot be said to be ‘fully implemented’ by September 1, 2018, when it puts off full funding of basic education salaries until the 2019-20 school year,” says the court order, which was signed by all nine justices.
The high court’s decision throws a wrench into the plans of the state, which had argued lawmakers should be largely out of the court’s microscope. It’s not immediately clear how much money legislators plan to come up with to meet the ruling.
The court suggested the state is roughly $1 billion short.
The court said the task must also be completed during a 60-day legislative session beginning in January in which lawmakers typically make small tweaks to the existing two-year budget approved in odd-numbered years.
What lawmakers plan to do to meet the ruling is so far unclear. Calls to top legislators were not immediately returned Wednesday. Tara Lee, a spokeswoman for Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s office, said it was still analyzing the court order and would have comment soon.
The way forward will hinge largely on Democrats, who now own slim majorities in the House and Senate after winning a special election in Seattle’s Eastside suburbs last week.
At least one Democrat, Rep. Gerry Pollet of Seattle, said on Twitter new revenue “will be essential” to meet the court order.
Some parts of the court order can be interpreted as a victory for lawmakers. The coalition of parents, education groups and school districts that sued the state over the constitutional mandate to fully fund public schools had argued the state fell short in other areas besides meeting the 2018 deadline, such as special education funding.
Due to the restrictions in local levies, some school districts have even argued they were better off under the old way of funding teacher salaries.
The court also did not ding the Legislature over its failure to pass a construction budget for the first time in modern memory. That capital budget is expected to have $4 billion in construction projects, including roughly $1 billion for public schools intended to reduce class sizes as required by McCleary.
Though it has bipartisan support, the capital budget fell through over a partisan divide on rural water rights.
The court noted the 2015 two-year operating budget and the 2016 supplemental budget had money to begin school construction. The justices also suggest capital projects are not part of the constitutional requirement to fully fund public schools.
Still, Rich Wood, a spokesman for the Washington Education Association, said he is “glad that the court retained jurisdiction.” He said his union has been pointing out for months the new budget approved by lawmakers in 2017 didn’t meet the 2018 deadline.
He said students deserve a fully funded K-12 system, and fast.
“They can’t wait any longer for that,” he said.
