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Budgets rolling out of Olympia

02/25/2016
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Wednesday was quite a day in Olympia, with the Senate budget and both the House and Senate releasing capital budgets.

We’ll start with the Senate operating budget. After accounting for caseload adjustments, the story is short: a big ‘zero’, ‘zip’, ‘nada’ for K-12 public schools. OK, maybe that is a tad high on the hyperbole. Afterall, the Senate did move $1 million into the program providing alternative routes to teacher certification, and $900,000 to implement a paraeducator bill that would require paras to become certificated. However, all that money is for implementation and not a dime to assist paras with training costs. WEA has opposed this bill because we are concerned that paraeducators will lose their jobs as a result of this unfunded requirement. 

As expected, the Senate also included $6 million for charter school operations. Senators will tell you that they are funding charters from the lottery’s “Opportunity Pathways” account, but in reality, they are transferring funds out of the general fund and into that account so other lottery-funded programs aren’t cut.

The House capital budget tells a better story. It emphasizes K-12 construction by assuming nearly $200 million for construction of classrooms for K-3 and all-day kindergarten with additional grants in the budget and resources appropriated out of the Budget Stabilization Account in a separate bill. The budget adds $35 million for K-12 classroom construction and $11 million for a pilot program using modular construction with cross-laminated timber for K-12 classrooms.

The Senate capital budget is better than its operating budget for K-12.   Nearly half of the new funding in the Senate capital budget is for K-12. That’s $74 million. About half of that is for general construction and the other half is dedicated to K-3 classroom construction grants.  The Senate budget is much lower than the House’s, but at least K-12 was called out as a priority expenditure.

The remaining two weeks of session will be spent finalizing bills and negotiating compromise budgets. 

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