Washington education groups unite around school funding bill, SB 6397
When the Legislature was debating a McCleary school funding plan last year, WEA members urged legislators to protect school districts’ flexibility to use levy funding to meet local students’ needs.
Educators also warned against removing experience and education levels as factors in the state funding formula for teacher salaries (a policy that corporate ed reform groups supported).
We also spoke out against Senate Republican proposals that reduced overall funding for special education students.
Despite our concerns, the final school budget approved last year reduced levy flexibility, eliminated experience and education from the teacher salary allocation formula and fell short on funding the true cost of special education.
Now WEA is working with superintendents, school boards, principals, parents and other school employee unions to support legislation that fixes those glitches in the new school funding system. WEA and many other groups testified Jan. 22 in support of Senate Bill 6397 before the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee.
SB 6397 is part of WEA’s Unity Agenda. Highlights of the bill would:
- Provide full funding of McCleary compensation levels in the 2018-19 school year to comply with the state Supreme Court ruling.
- Create an "experience mix" factor for districts with above-average salary costs.
- Improve the regionalization pay to address border effects caused in the new law.
- Phase in the remaining I-1351 class size and workload reductions.
- Increase local levy funding and flexibility to meet local needs beyond state-funded basic education.
- Modify the funding formula to ensure special/high needs students receive the support they need to succeed.
- Ensure districts receive enough funding to meet ongoing salary needs.
Despite widespread support for the legislation, a lobbyist for the pro-voucher Washington Policy Center spoke against it, telling senators that Washington’s school districts “need to get their spending under control.” The WPC lobbyist also complained about the lack of levy funding for privately operated charter schools. US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke at a controversial fundraiser for the WPC last October.
