Upgrading a school system with fair state funding - Lake Washington School District, Redmond, Washington

American Education, August-Sept, 1984 by Rod Chandler

LWEA's Vogel agrees. "We feel that we are working toward the same goals now," she says. "Now we sit down with the district's administration and work out problems before they become a crisis."

A predictable source of funding

Still, this is only half the Lake Washington story. Surely, internal reforms by themselves would have brought enormous benefits. But when the Washington Legislature adopted a program of full funding for basic education, districts like Scarr's had, for the first time in years, predictable and stable funding.

By 1976, Washington elementary and secondary schools relied on voter-approved annual property tax levies for up to 50 percent of their maintenance and operations budgets. This meant that teacher salaries, classroom supplies, textbooks, transportation and all else was funded half from the state and half from the local district.

Washington state found itself, as did much of the nation, in the throes of a taxpayer rebellion, and increasingly voters looked to the one "tax on the ballot" to register their disapproval--the school levy. Across the state, school districts were crippled by repeated levy failures and the resulting layoff of teachers and closure of schools. A successful lawsuit and a group of mostly women activists calling themselves Citizens for Fair School Funding combined to force the most positive education reform in the state's history.

The framers of the Washington constitution declared in 1889 that it is the "paramount duty" of the state to provide an "ample and equal" educational opportunity to every child. On that basis, a Thurston County Superior Court judge found the state's method of funding education to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court upheld the decision and the Citizens for Fair School Funding went to work.

The product was a decision by the legislature to fund "basic education" entirely. The basics were defined in state law and included the obvious: reading, math, science, social studies and electives. The law also spelled out requirements for the amount of time to be spent on each subject and established minimum requirements for teacher-student contact. Special levies were still to be allowed, but only for a fraction of the original cost to the taxpayer.

"We wanted school districts to provide the basics and we wanted them to be held accountable," says Anne Carlson, spearhead of Citizens for Fair School Funding. "We knew districts could not provide quality education without the financial resources. But we also wanted to make sure the state got its money's worth."

For Lake Washington, the funding stability could not have come at a more opportune time. According to Bob Otteson, member of the district's school board, predictable stable funding has been a major element in the district's success.

"Before state funding you could never plan on anything," he recalls. "One year the resources would be there for a half-way decent program and the next year you would be firing up to a third of your staff."