Washington lawmakers consider diverting public charter school funding to preschool, traditional public schools

All 50 students in downtown Spokane’s Lumen High School are pregnant or already parents to young children.

As many as 60% of them don’t have a parent or guardian present in their own lives.

“They are essentially a minor with another minor, trying to navigate the world without a lot of legal rights,” said Shauna Edwards, executive director at the school. “You know, you can’t go get an apartment if you’re under 18.”

Open since 2020, Lumen High School is a small public charter school that serves pregnant teens and parents aged 14 to 20. Each receives a project-based education tailored to their lives as young parents: personal finance, wellness, traditional academics and, of course, child rearing. Next door, Glow Children Early Learning Center offers child care while young parents are in class.

It is all meant to support parent-pupils, ensuring their responsibilities raising a child interfere minimally with their roles as students and vice-versa, Edwards said.

To work one-on-one with kids, Lumen employs an on-site coordinator from Communities in Schools. Her responsibilities include stocking the school’s resource closet, connecting kids with helpful community groups and making sure students come to school.

Lumen pays for its on-site coordinator with their share of charter school enrichment funds from the state. It’s about $60,000 at her school, Edwards said, or 2% of their overall operating budget.

A proposed version of the state’s supplemental budget this year would end this funding stream for charter schools across the state, a sum of $7.4 million, instead using the money to lessen proposed cuts in state preschool programs and aid for property-poor public school districts.

The state has given public charter schools enrichment funding since 2024, typically in the ballpark of $7 million to $8 million spread across all 16 public charter schools that enroll 4,800 kids across Washington. Unlike traditional public school districts, public charter schools cannot collect revenue through property tax collections like levies or bonds. State enrichment allocations cover some of what a public school may use a levy for, like extracurriculars, staffing or training.

“This is a way that it makes it equal for these public school students across the state to have the same enrichment opportunities or engagement that is happening in any school,” Edwards said.

The money is never guaranteed, but it is especially precarious this year as lawmakers grapple with a $2.3 billion budget deficit and their budget conversations mostly surround what to cut.

A version of the yet-to-be-finalized supplemental budget scrapped this year’s allotment of around $7.4 million in charter school enrichment. It is a drop in the bucket among hundreds of millions in proposed spending cuts, but Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island, proposed the budget amendment to use that money elsewhere. She said it is better spent on the state’s transition to kindergarten program, facing much larger cuts in proposed budgets.

“I felt it’s really, really challenging to give enrichment money to charters at a time when I’m taking it away from where I could be putting it, in programs that are very, very meaningful to all children in our education system,” Wellman said.

The state’s transition to kindergarten program enrolls more than 7,200 kids, offering preschool slots to kids based on a screening procedure, not financial need. It has been successful at getting young children ready for school, state Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in a news release.

Kids in the program outperformed their peers who were not in transition to kindergarten in every tested subject area, according to the superintendent’s office, including math, literacy, social emotional learning and physical education.

“The results are clear,” Reykdal said in a release. “Students who attend (Transition to Kindergarten) are more prepared for success on day one of kindergarten. That stronger start matters – not just for individual students, but for the long-term success of our entire education system.”

Budget proposals take aim at the program in several ways: one reducing enrollment slots by a quarter, another requiring income eligibility to enroll. The proposals would cut funding by around $19 million and $31.6 million, respectively.

In hearing from school leaders praising the preschool program, Wellman said she was motivated to find money somewhere.

“Seeing what had happened because they had access to a meaningful program before they came into kindergarten, ready to learn, ready to participate, socialized, was significant,” she said.

Another pot of education money facing cuts is the state’s local effort assistance program that subsidizes school districts without much property value to tax from. This money also pays for extracurriculars and staff in traditional public schools – much like charter schools’ enrichment dollars.

Proposals in each chamber would cut boosts to this assistance by $25.1 million or $59.1 million annually. Superintendent’s office spokesperson Katy Payne said districts should be bracing for cuts in this funding stream, as should much of the K-12 system.

When looking at diverting what could be public charter school money to traditional education, Wellman said there wasn’t enough to boost local effort, and she favored preschool.

“We definitely need to look at (Local Effort Assistance), but this was not sufficient to make a difference in that program across all the school districts,” Wellman said.