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Shawn Vestal: With new ed funding plan, the constant is the variables

Four thousand dollars per student.

That’s how much additional money is expected to flow through Spokane Public Schools between next school year and 2020-21.

And: Thirty dollars for the typical homeowner.

That’s how much annual property taxes are estimated to go down over that time.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal: More money for students, less money from me.

But when it comes to the state’s new education funding formula, the constant is all the variables, and the product is uncertainty. The expectations vary dramatically from district to district, and the key word is estimates.

In Mead, per-pupil funding is expected to go up $3,260, and median property taxes rise $90 over that time. In Medical Lake, $5,054 more per pupil is expected, with a property tax increase of $540.

These differences are due to a lot of factors, from the seniority of the teaching staff to the percentage of poor students to the home values in the district. And they’re one reason that, though lawmakers have trumpeted the plan as a historic success, and though it does direct a lot more money toward the schools, education officials are still trying to figure out exactly what it will mean and whether it will accomplish what it’s supposed to.

“It’s a different kind of difficult,” said Doug Matson, deputy superintendent of the West Valley School District. “Right now, there are a lot of unknowns.”

Matson’s district, for example, is expected to see a $2,560 per-pupil increase between 2018-19 and 2020-21. Property taxes on a median-value home are projected to drop $310 by 2021.

T.J. Kelly, the director of school apportionment and financial services for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said that while some lawmakers had sought to simplify the system, what emerged was not exactly simple.

“Certainly, I think the Senate’s intent was to make the formula less complicated,” he said. “But in the end, we ended up with something far more focused on providing ample funding and not on making the system less complicated.”

The plan emerged from a Star Chamber in Olympia that was excessively secretive and lacking in even a pretense of public participation. State attorneys and critics of the plan, meanwhile, will be arguing before the Supreme Court whether this new plan constitutes “ample” funding, as required by the state Constitution.

School officials on the West Side came out this week arguing that the new plan will bust their budgets, since it shifts resources away from affluent districts like Seattle.

Officials in the Spokane area are taking a more reserved approach, waiting to see how things play out as the major pieces of the new legislation take effect. SPS just passed its 2017-18 budget, which includes a 7 percent increase in funding. But the major pieces of the new legislation don’t kick in until next year.

Linda McDermott, chief financial officer for Spokane Public Schools, said that as soon as the district’s 2017-18 budget was passed Wednesday night, she turned her attention to next year. She said she understands the conceptual framework of the legislation, but is still sorting through the details.

“That’s where me and my team and my colleagues from other districts just don’t have it all figured out yet,” she said.

Districts are waiting to see how changes in the funding of programs for at-risk students shake out, and they’re concerned that special education funding isn’t sufficient. They’re worried that the projected increases in funding don’t keep pace with cost increases. They’re also carefully watching the central funding mechanism of the program: the reduction of district-level maintenance and operations levies, to be replaced by state funding.

Matson, the West Valley deputy superintendent, noted that his district’s current M&O levy rate is $4.50 per $1,000 of value. (Spokane’s is $3.96). Under the new legislation, that goes down to $1.50, to be replaced by state funding. Matson said there are a host of questions around how that will happen, and whether it will work – given that education funding often comes with strings attached, targeted for specific uses. The total does not always reflect limits on the district’s ability to deploy the resources.

“There’s a ton of unknowns,” he said.

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