What’s ample school funds?

OLYMPIA – Over the past few months, a small group of state officials and lawmakers have started meeting in Olympia to hash out several seemingly simple questions: What’s a basic education? What does it cost? And how can the state pay for it?

But it’s not simple at all.

Despite decades of pleas for change, more money, or both, Washington’s recent educational policy is a labyrinth of lawsuits, arcane funding formulas, dozens of studies and a long string of gubernatorial vows to do better.

Against that backdrop, a couple of Spokanites – Lisa Brown and Laurie Dolan – are among those trying to chart the course for the future.

Brown is the state Senate majority leader. Dolan, a longtime teacher and Spokane Public Schools official, heads Gov. Chris Gregoire’s pool of executive policy advisers.

“I think all the cosmic tumblers are lining up for this to finally come together and decide how we’re going to pay for this educational system in a way that makes more sense,” Dolan said.

School district officials and parents need to easily understand where the money comes from and what it’s buying, she said, “and we don’t have that now.”

Washington’s 295 school districts typically get about 70 percent of their money from the state – about $6,237 of the total $8,962 spent per student each year. But teachers and local school officials worry that the state’s percentage is eroding, just as Gregoire and the Legislature have been pushing for educational reforms. Laura Bay, president of the state’s Parent-Teacher Association, said schools are increasingly turning to local property taxes to pay for the basics.

In 2005, lawmakers and Gregoire launched “Washington Learns,” which was supposed to be a comprehensive study to revamp education for the 21st century. It led to some reforms, including a push for math and science teaching by Gregoire, but left a huge question unanswered. If better education means spending more – and many of those involved feel it will – how can the state raise the millions or billions more that are needed? After all, Washingtonians three years ago overwhelmingly rejected a much-touted 1-cent sales-tax boost that would have pumped billions more dollars into education.

Thus was born the task force – a 14-member panel made up largely of lawmakers, and which includes Brown and Dolan. By next fall, the group and the Washington State Institute for Public Policy are supposed to provide the Legislature with “options for a new funding structure” for the state’s school system.

There’s plenty of skepticism that this will lead to substantive reform. There have been at least 73 government or research-group studies of school funding in Washington since 1992.

“I have a large collection of binders and I intend to add this one to it,” vowed Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville. “It’s going to be exactly the same as every other report since 1992.”

If lawmakers really wanted to make public schools their top priority, as the state constitution says it must be, they could simply rein in other government programs, Schoesler said. It won’t happen, he said.

“They (Democrats) are not going to take away from their core constituencies’ wish lists to properly fund education,” he said.

It’s not that simple, Brown suggested in an exchange last week with a lawyer suing the state to try to boost school funding.

In her central Spokane legislative district, she said, some schools have massive student turnover due to poverty and crises in their lives. The state cannot separate services such as homeless programs, affordable housing and food programs from education, she said. Kids can’t take advantage of a great teacher in the classroom, she said, if they’re not housed and fed.

At the same meeting, Dolan pressed the attorney, Thomas Ahearne, on where he would get the extra school money, or what he’d cut. Would he close prisons? Cut transportation? Health care?

“People already think they amply fund education, and we just need to spend the money better,” she said.

And what if lawmakers ask taxpayers to pay more and they again say no? There’s no easy answer, Ahearne responded.

But under Washington’s constitution, all Washington children have a constitutional right to “ample provision for (their) education.”

More than a century after the state’s founders penned those words, what is “ample” remains unclear. Last week, the task force heard from a teachers union-sponsored researcher who recommended an average teacher salary of $60,043. And five school finance experts polled for the same study recommended additional teachers for full-day kindergarten; more special instruction teachers and classified staff; more professional development for principals and teachers; additional administrators, teachers and supplies; more social workers, campus security and counselors; additional librarians, aides and supplies for school libraries; and more substitute teachers, computers, technical staff and extracurricular activities.

Some task force members say more money isn’t necessarily the answer.

“Per-pupil spending has no relation to student achievement,” said Rep. Glenn Anderson, R-Fall City.

Dolan says she remains optimistic that the year-long project will result in substantial reforms. People care about their kids and schools, she said. She was encouraged by the recent come-from-behind victory of a constitutional amendment making it easier for schools to raise tax money.

But it’s up to the state and schools, she said, to show people where their dollars are going.

“We can’t have the funding discussion without making how we finance schools make more sense to the public,” she said. “But I do think there’s a readiness to deal with the topic that has not been there in the past. Ultimately, it’s the public who’s going to have to decide.”