House and Senate Budget Differences on K12

I’ll be posting a handful of high-level summaries of budget differences with the Senate over the next few days. As usual, K12 is my first post in this sequence.

House Democrats are investing $3.2 billion more in K-12 education with this budget over the amount we spent in the last biennium, a 21% increase. People have asked me what the difference is between the House and Senate budgets for K-12 spending. This chart has the highlights.

K12 Funding Differences

There are lots of other places I have concerns, like the Senate requirement that districts reduce their levies if they accept the constitutionally required operating cost money, even though the Senate budget doesn’t address the costs those local levies pay for.

For more thoughts on education funding, click here.

 

Author: Ross

I am the Director of the Department of Early Learning for Washington State. I formerly represented the 48th Legislative District in the State House of Representatives, chairing the Appropriations committee and spent many a year at Microsoft.