Reviews mixed on school budget

OLYMPIA – This has been, by many measures, a banner year in Olympia for public education. Prodded by Gov. Chris Gregoire, state lawmakers poured nearly $2 billion more into school budgets, as well as nearly a billion more for school construction.

“Washingtonians asked us to invest in and reform our education system,” Gregoire told students in Tacoma recently. “We are delivering.”

Yet as local school officials drill down into the details, one thing’s becoming increasingly clear: The seeming budget windfall is unlikely to help much as the region’s largest school district struggles with a multimillion-dollar shortfall.

“We’ll get $15.97 million new dollars from the state, but it’s driving $19.67 million in new expenditures,” said Brian Benzel, superintendent of Spokane Public Schools. “The good news is it could have been worse.”

For months, Benzel and other school officials throughout the state had urged lawmakers to focus on the foundation – basic education funding – before new programs and initiatives.

However, Benzel said, “I don’t feel like the resulting budget addressed the issues that we were raising.”

That can be a hard thing to say in what was inarguably a big-money year. The two-year operating budget for education is almost a 15 percent increase over the last one, according to Dan Steele, director of government relations for the Washington State School Directors’ Association.

“Most people would say ‘Wow! That’s good news,’ ” he said. “But as you continue the conversation, there are some frustrating and disconcerting things.”

Gregoire stands by the budget, which she’s expected to soon sign into law.

“Go ahead and take a look at it,” she said. The budget fully funds initiatives for teachers’ cost-of-living increases and smaller class sizes, she said. It adds an extra $75 million for special education.

“It is an $897-per-student increase in funding,” she said. “That is nothing short of a huge investment by this Legislature.”

Local school districts say they’re struggling with nuts-and-bolts things like paying for school buses, heat, diesel, computers and staffers that Olympia won’t pay for. Yes, the budget adds $75 million more for special education, Steele said, but schools had asked for $275 million. Yes, it adds $25 million for transportation, he said, but schools sought $200 million.

Lawmakers this year tended to follow Gregoire’s call for a big push on math and science education, including numerous demonstration projects and teacher recruitment and training. In appearances throughout the state, Gregoire has evangelized for an overhaul of those subjects, arguing that they’re critical for Washington’s students to compete in a global marketplace.

The Senate’s budget proposal would have put more money into transportation, special education, the learning assistance program for struggling schools and other basic education.

“I wish we could have gone farther in all those areas,” Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, said as the final budget took shape last month. “But we were facing a governor who was very determined to put some of the resources in professional development and other programs.”

The mandates bring costs to a district already struggling with a $10.5 million shortfall, Benzel said. For example, the state is providing an extra $1.4 million to offer full-day kindergarten in five schools. But the district expects it to cost $1.5 million. The district will get about $210,000 more for transportation – but faces a total of $700,000 in increased costs.

“It’s hard to sound rational when we’re getting this much new money,” Benzel said. “Anybody that knows me knows I’m not a whiner…But we just need to be clear that the new initiatives we’re getting didn’t tackle the fundamental issue we’d been hoping to deal with.”

Other local districts gave the education budget mixed reviews. Mead School District Superintendent Tom Rockefeller echoed some of the concerns voiced by Benzel. While his budget will likely rise to $76 million this year from $72 million, he said, it’s hard to explain to voters that the district somehow has fewer discretionary dollars to work with.

He estimates, for example, that it will cost the district an extra $650,000 to give staff not funded by the state the same cost-of-living increases that state-paid workers get.

“I’m not opposed to a cost-of-living adjustment, but I am opposed to the state not fully funding it,” Rockefeller said.

Mead is already spending about $1.3 million in local taxes on special education and another $1.6 million on transportation costs not covered by the state, he said, “and it’s getting worse.”

And the state’s $25 million more for special education, he said, is “miniscule” when spread across Washington’s 296 school districts.

“We’re still fairly healthy,” Rockefeller said, “We’re just kind of treading water. We’re just not sinking as fast as some other districts.”

The picture seems rosier for Central Valley School District, although, like Mead, it’s still trying to figure out what the budget will mean.

Central Valley should get about $300,000 more for special education, Superintendent Mike Pearson said, as well as more for transportation. And it’s hoping to get about $120,000 or more for technology purchases. It also helps that schools will now be able to claim funding for students who go to skill center programs.

“Overall, I think it’s a win for us,” said Pearson.

As for Spokane, Benzel said he’s hoping that some of Olympia’s marching orders are flexible, allowing the district to steer dollars into existing programs that are working. And there was good news this year, he said. The budget includes an additional $2.3 million for school construction, for example. Lawmakers also agreed to ask voters to do away with a decades-old requirement that school districts get approval from a 60 percent “supermajority” of voters to increase property tax levies.

“But this core funding issue hasn’t been addressed,” he said.

School officials throughout the state were hoping for substantive school-funding reforms to emerge in winter, as the much-touted “Washington Learns” task force unveiled recommended changes. But the group stopped short of making the expected recommendations to reform the state’s stunningly complex funding formula for schools. Instead, the task force now hopes to make those recommendations in 2008, just after the next statewide election.

“They just flat didn’t do it,” said Steele, of the Washington State School Directors’ Association.