John Deeder, the superintendent of Evergreen Public Schools, has made some difficult decisions in the past few years: His district laid off staff, slashed the budget and asked remaining employees to do more with fewer resources.
Now, he said, it’s lawmakers’ turn to make some difficult calls.
The state Supreme Court agreed, ordering the Legislature in January to “demonstrate through immediate, concrete action, that it is making real and measurable progress, not simply promises” toward providing ample funding for basic education.
The clock is ticking. The court ordered a plan, no later than April 30, detailing how lawmakers will fund education.
“They ran for elections and took on this responsibility and it’s up to them to solve the problem,” Deeder, whose school district is the largest in Clark County, said of lawmakers.
The conflict is a result of a 2012 state Supreme Court case, McCleary v. State of Washington. The court ruled that the state was not meeting its “paramount duty” of adequately funding education and therefore was in violation of the Constitution. Lawmakers have until 2018 to boost education funding to a level the court deems sufficient.
Today, a joint committee charged with being the liaison between the state’s top court and the Legislature on all things McCleary will meet.
With the end-of-the-month deadline looming and with the state wading deeper into uncharted territory, it’s unclear if it’s already too late to satisfy the court’s demand by the end of this month.
“The time to come up with a plan was the legislative session that just ended, and there was no progress made,” said Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, who is on the liaison committee and the Senate Education Committee.
The two parties are coming at it from different perspectives. Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, echoed some views held by some other Republicans. “Last year we put $1 billion additional funding into K-12, and that’s a pretty significant amount,” he told The Columbian earlier.
“It may not be at the pace the court would like, but last time I checked, the constitution gave appropriation duties to the Legislature and not the courts. So, we’ll follow the constitution … Sometimes our courts need to take a timeout and re-read the constitution,” Benton said.
Key players
It’s highly unlikely, Rolfes said, that lawmakers will do more than try to agree on what to report to the state court at today’s meeting.
But she noted the committee is made up of the Legislature’s key education players.
“I’m hoping we can work constructively over the summer to come up with a bipartisan plan that we could put before the Legislature,” she said. “And if the governor wants us to have a special session, then I would be supportive of that.”
Ben Rarick, the executive director of the Washington State Board of Education, said lawmakers might need to think creatively to find a solution.
“I think what the court is looking for is the Legislature to understand this is one of those issues that is so important that sometimes you have to set aside some of your differences to achieve something of paramount importance to the state,” Rarick said.
The committee’s job this month, said Sen. David Frockt, D-Seattle — who is on the panel — is to “report to the court what we did and didn’t do. And quite honestly, we’re not going to have great progress to report.”
And, he added, “What they do with that is the $64,000 question.”
Rolfes said it would have been a heavy lift for lawmakers in the short legislative session to take major steps toward crafting a bipartisan education plan.
“The conversation is, what do you cut in state spending or what taxes do you raise, and those are not easy conversations for legislators to have,” she said.
Phil Talmadge, who served as a state Supreme Court justice and in the state senate, said the state is in “uncharted waters” embarking toward a “constitutional crises.”
Talmadge said there are a lot of options available to the court if it deems lawmakers aren’t making progress. And, he pointed out, there are ways the Legislature could retaliate.
But for now, it’s speculation, and he said he hopes it stays that way.
“You need both institutions functioning at their maximum level of functionality,” he said. “You don’t want to see them at each other’s throats this way.”
