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Editorial: Lawmakers should put I-1351 on hold, for now

Wed., July 8, 2015

Washington legislators must make Initiative 1351 go away, at least for the next four years.

The $38.2 billion budget they passed last week did many good things, but it did not do the impossible: Authorize the smaller K-12 class sizes mandated by I-1351 and raise the $2 billion needed to comply. The Legislature did provide money for smaller classes through grade three, but stopped there.

We would have preferred the Legislature declare the reductions authorized in the 2015-2017 operating budget sufficient progress toward compliance with I-1351, with further shrinkage as future revenue growth allowed. But that would not have satisfied the Washington Education Association, a teachers union that supported the initiative, or the law that requires budgets be balanced for two bienniums.

And it may be that lawmakers’ handiwork does not satisfy the Washington Supreme Court, which declared state support for education insufficient three years ago and has monitored progress since then. The court in September found lawmakers in contempt for failure to put up more money, with the understanding they would reconsider when the session (times three) was over.

Nothing the Legislature did addressed the core of the court’s finding: that the state leaves too much of the responsibility for funding K-12 education to local school districts. The additional $1.3 billion from Olympia does not solve that problem, and the legislators know it.

The justices will review their contempt ruling once the legislators complete their work.

But first, I-1351 must be dealt with.

Setting aside an initiative takes a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. The legislation passed in the House on a bipartisan 72-26 vote.

The way it was handled in the Senate would give sausage-making a bad name.

The budget package was not one bill, but a series of bills.

Majority Republicans say they had a deal that the Democrats would deliver the votes needed to clear the two-thirds bar for suspending the initiative. Democrats, Spokane’s Sen. Andy Billig among them, said their bargain was not a suspension of I-1351, but a two-year delay that would allow legislators to come up with a funding plan and address what they characterize as “high-stakes testing.”

A biology test that has snagged the graduations of 2,000 high school seniors is their Exhibit A. But a bill that would have granted relief from that test was much broader and would have compromised – again – the state’s efforts to set meaningful graduation standards. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the House but did not even get a hearing in the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee.

Good, because moving the goalposts in at the last minute is terrible policy. There can be, and undoubtedly will be, alternative arrangements made to get these students, most in good standing otherwise, the credits they need.

As to I-1351, legislators can either fund it with $2 billion in new taxes or suspend it. Now that voters – who passed the initiative with a majority of just more than 50 percent – can see the costs, a suspension should be acceptable.