Guest Rant Jan 9, 2023 at 2:10 pm

Push Your Represenatives on This Today

Limits on state funding are causing Seattle Public Schools to look at things like cuts to school buses. It doesn't have to be this way. SEANAMI / GETTY

Comments

3

Not sure why the author omits the fact that Seattle Schools runs out of money next year without a legislative fix. It’s not clear what happens after that, but it’s not good. And that’s a reason to start to care if nothing else: poor kids have suffered enough disruption during COVID. This country is going to look very different in 20 years with poorly prepared citizens to take on the challenges coming.

5

"Washingtonians have a constitutional right to amply funded public schools. When Washington ranks 17th in education funding, spending nearly $10,000 less per student than Massachusetts while facing huge cuts, it's clear we're failing to deliver that right."

Do you think increasing school funding will teach students to craft nonsensical arguments like this? Let's rephrase, so how bad an argument this actually is comes out more obviously: "It is clear we are not meeting our obligation for amply-funded schools because WA only ranks 17th out of 50 states, i.e. well above the national average."

And either the data, or the math, isn't even correct. MA spends $19,193 per pupil; WA spends $14,348 per pupil.

https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics

The only continental US state west of the Rockies that spends more on K-12 (per pupil) is Wyoming. Add the entirety of the Midwest and the South and only Illinois spends more.

I fail to understand how, when spending well more per-pupil than most states, WA has a "public education funding crisis"; maybe schools don't have all the money they would like to have, and perhaps they face budget shortfalls. But neither of those is dispositive evidence for the claim that WA has a funding crisis or is not meeting its obligations.

6

"West of the Rockies" should have read "west of the Mississippi" — there I go, underselling my own point.

7

Came here to highlight the same issue @5 mentioned. In addition, Washington actually ranks 16th in per pupil spending, per the author's own source data. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/school-finances/tables/2020/secondary-education-finance/elsec20_sumtables.xls

8

Please don't sleep on higher education if and when you push your reps. Our state's community and technical colleges are criminally underfunded, and the Seattle Colleges District does not pay living wages for faculty OR support student success nearly enough.

9

This was train wreck long coming, and there is plenty of blame to go around.

McCleary paved the way for a lot of additional funding, however, instead of more prudent planning, many districts used this funding for unsustainable labor contracts with teachers.

Before everybody jumps down my throat, I am full support of paying teachers a decent & livable wage - but you can’t do that in an unsustainable fashion. That’s ultimately not fair for the teachers, and especially not fair for the kids that will suffer with cuts. But don’t say this is a surprise.

10

@5 and @7,
Washington state is a relatively high cost of living area. It’s not fair to say we pay more than most states, case closed, moving on.

It’s also true that districts could manage their money better. Which is unfortunate because taxpayers and voters are tired.

11

What Robert doesn't mention in his editorial is how will additional funding actually improve results? Did we see improvement in educational performance when all the money from the McCleary decision flowed into schools? The short answer is no. That money went straight to fund teacher salaries, which is fine, but it did nothing to actually improve educational outcomes for kids. What he also neglects to mention is how SPS got to the position they are in today. Last year they negotiated a new contract with their teachers union that they KNEW they could not afford. They were already facing an upcoming budget deficit so instead of working within that framework they totally blew it out of the water with the assumption the shortfall would put increased pressure on the state to increase funding (https://crosscut.com/news/2022/09/how-will-seattle-public-schools-pay-new-teacher-contract). This is bad stewardship and should immediately disqualify SPS from any discussion around school funding as they clearly only view taxpayers as a resource to be exploited. During the same period this district was embroiled in controversies around racism in the district office and on the school board, shut down advanced programs in the name of equity and employed people like Tracy Castro-Gill. These are reasons why SPS is losing students not because they are not being funded adequately.

Also lost on Robert is the fact the capital gains tax has still not yet been ruled on by the WA Supreme Court and a wealth tax will be extremely difficult to implement and manage. How would such a tax impact low income people in this position? https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-area-percentage-of-house-rich-cash-poor-among-highest-in-u-s/. Should we kick people on fixed incomes out of their homes when they can't afford to pay the wealth tax on top of their property tax?

These kinds of editorials in TS are really the worst. They play on emotional appeals to fairness and equity while citing support for the "kids" or "marginalized groups" but offer nothing in the way of improving the actual problem they are trying to address. Rather its just another stick it to the "rich" (however you want to define) that scheme to take that money and give it to whatever union or government agency is going to ensure fairness. It's all made up bullshit and there are more people than just me who have had enough and are tired of it.

13

How can the state leg take SPS seriously, with their bloated admin, mismanagement of special education, undermining of their teachers and other staff, hostility toward parents with children in the district, the bungling of union negotiations, effective elimination of gifted education, and a board which ceded all democratic authority to the superintendent through Carver governance? Fully funding poor governance and poor management will not, sadly, fix Seattle school woes.

My second question is, why Robert isn't mentioning any of this?

14

Hmm. Low performing schools, crappy education, poor administration.... so parents self school, go to private schools and the millennials don't breed... or at least breed less while living with mommy and daddy.

So, lets see, less children,.... so why not cut the budget, fire extra teachers, useless administrators... who are not needed and consolidate schools.

Ground breaking solution.... but the proposal is to increase the budget and tax the rich to pay for low performing schools that are not needed.

16

@15

That's crazy talk.... you can't expect performance, fiscal responsibility and education from the SPS or the teacher's union.

We want everybody to fail at the same level, with diversity, transparency, community involvement, mutual respect tolerance, equity and with an abundance of caution. (did I miss any catch phrases?)

17

Commenter #11 (District 13 Refugee) says it best. Seattle has a horribly mismanaged public school system.

I will add that the Seattle School District has slated $41MILLION- $51 MILLION dollars to cover transportation costs for a single year and the district is only transporting approximately 1/5 of the student population or 9000-10,000 students. There is a SINGLE board member that is interested in transportation reform which will NOT get support from the board majority which is focused on "equity".

The board and superintendent have been focused on changing the governance system. Changes to the governance system has cost taxpayers enormous amounts of dollars in administrative time and attention. What did we get for the governance change? A board that agreed to kill committee meetings from 10-22 to 7-2023. We got less transparency.

I agree with District 13 Refugee and I get tired of exploiting taxpayers without calls for fiscal responsibility.

18

@10 The author is the one relying on spending-per-pupil, that's not my idea. I don't know what led the author to rely upon that metric, it was a dumb choice--that's the whole point of my post. The author's argument would be much more compelling if the metric he used was relation of public elementary/secondary school spending to $1000 personal income (WA ranks 33rd). That would better address the cost-of-living issue you raised.

19

Push Your Represenatives* on This Today

Sorry, too late. You can't spell.


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