-
Post-Session Notes, Operating Budget Comments
Thank you again for letting me represent you in Olympia. It’s an honor and a privilege, though I feel much less privileged when the session runs into July. We finished our work Friday morning June 10th, passing a transportation spending bill and bills that allow the state to take out bonds based on the revenue.…
-
McCleary, the Court and Funding Compensation
Chris Vance has a lot to say in this article on Crosscut that I agree with, but more that I don’t. He is right that the Legislature didn’t address the compensation element and still needs to. I expect the court to have something to say on this soon. However, he and Superintendent Dorn remain confused about…
-
Legislature Still has Work to Do
You may have read in the press that the Legislature got a budget done by midnight on June 30th, allowing the state to continue providing unemployment assistance, Medicaid, childcare, public schools, college classes, and all of the other things that we have decided to do collectively. I am frustrated that we were unable to come…
-
Meeting on K-12 Compensation and Levy Reform
[UPDATE 5/20/15 10:30 PM We will be on TVW. You can find it on their website or click here.] As I mentioned in my last blog post and newsletter, I think it’s necessary to discuss the details about levy reform in detail and in public. Tomorrow, we are hosting a work session on K-12 levy…
-
School Levy and Compensation Reform
Two recent articles in the Seattle Times point out one of the remaining key elements of resolving the McCleary “problem”, and it’s a BIG element. Most estimates have the size of the problem at about $3,000,000,000 to $3,500,000,000 ($3 – $3.5 billion) a biennium. Wildly varying teacher salaries part of state budget debate This article describes the…
-
School District Compensation and Levy Reform
Last week the Appropriations committee held a hearing on the second half of the McCleary decision; the requirement that the state fund adequate compensation, not local taxpayers. The hearing took over 3 hours and is super-interesting. You can watch it on TVW here. This sounds terrifyingly dull, but it wasn’t. Anytime you talk about property…
-
Too Much Testing?
[Update: 5/8/15 added link to AP article “New standardized tests bring technical challenges, concern“] One of the issues that is tangentially budget-related that needs to be addressed during this special session is that of high school graduation requirements and the assessments that we are asking our kids to take. We’ve gone through many changes over the…
-
Answers to Popular Education Emails
I’ve been swamped with email on education issues and want to consolidate my responses to a number of popular questions as I think it’ll give a better sense of what my positions are on your issues. I’m hearing about: Basic Education funding, including ensuring that we adequately fund our McCleary obligation. Funding and implementation of Initiative 1351 The…
-
Budget Update and Thoughts on Teacher Compensation and Levy Reform
I write this on Tuesday April 21st. At this point I do not expect that the Legislature will agree on a budget before the regular session ends on Sunday April 26th. The Seattle Times published a lot of articles this weekend about the budget, and I’m structuring this newsletter around them. The first article in…
-
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…