Olympia Report: School Funding, Climate Rollback Initiative Consequences

“No matter how you look at it,” Washington state lawmakers shortchange public K-12 education by about $4 billion each year, Superintendent Chris Reykdal wrote in a letter to outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee that summarized the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s annual operating budget request.

The recent history of the Washington Legislature’s spending on public education is why Reykdal asked Inslee’s budget writers to spend about $3 billion for K-12 schools in the 2025-27 biennium. Reykdal is also up for reelection this year.

The infusion would be an important step toward bridging the ever-widening money gap from the state’s peak investment in K-12 education in 2019-20, which came after a series of admonishments by the state Supreme Court to the Legislature for skirting its constitutional duty to fully fund public education. There was a gradual decline of dollars and arguably, priority, for K-12 education in subsequent budget cycles.¹

The state is required to fully fund basic education for K-12 students. The definition of “basic education” doesn’t fully encompass everything required to run a public school, but fulfills the minimum requirements as defined by lawmakers.² The state has failed to uphold its minimum constitutional requirements to pay for basic education, Reykdal says, and in the agency’s budget request, about $1.5 billion of the $3 billion requested by OSPI from 2025-27 would go toward basic education.

https://www.postalley.org/2024/09/20/olympia-report-school-funding-climate-rollback-initiative-consequences/