A guest perspective . . .

I asked Scott, as TEA President, to share his views on the legislation in Olympia as a guest blogger. He has made comments, but I think it is important for him to have an opportunity to share with a wider audience. He and I agree on some areas and disagree on others as it relates to this legislation. Our biggest area of disagreement, I believe, may be in how we choose to proceed during this session. I lean towards finding components of the proposal that we can all agree to and moving forward on them. Scott believes that we should not move forward until there is a funding mechanism that makes it worth the effort to pursue areas where we might agree. After reading my earlier posts and his guest post, where are you on this continuum of action?

First, I would like to thank Mike for this opportunity to share with his readers my point of view on the current legislation going on in Olympia. Mike was been gracious enough to invite me and share some of the thoughts that I have been posting as comments to his blogs. I think that it exhibits Mike’s desire to have a real conversation and cognitive dissonance around an important issue that many education groups around our state are currently struggling with coming to agreement on.

Does our current education system in Washington need reform? Yes. Does this reform come with a price tag? Yes, $6 to $7 billion dollars. Does the state have the money or a named funding source to pay for all these reforms? No.

House Bill 1410 and Senate Bill 5444 are two bills that are filled with sweeping changes that would change the landscape of education in Washington State. And while the bills have changes that I agree with, the main issue is that the legislators who brought forth this bill forgot to include the most important detail, a funding source. This bill, if passed, would put the ball in the court of districts to cover the costs of these unfunded mandates because there would not be the additional resources to carry them out. Can our district take a financial hardship like this when we are currently facing $3 million in cuts?

Olympia has a track record with making changes and not funding them. Back in 1992, Governor Booth Gardner created the Governor’s Council on Education Reform and Funding (GCERF). This Council was formed in response to a WEA member campaign highlighting the lack of adequate State funding for public education. GCERF recommended plenty of education reforms but little funding to pay for them. We got Essential Learning Requirements (ELR’s), the Certificate of Mastery (for high school graduation), onerous certification rules (Pro-Cert), the Commission on Student Learning, WASL, and several other bureaucratic mandates without resources to carry them out. GCERF punted the funding issue to the Legislature, and the Legislature dropped the ball. I believe that this is exactly what the current legislature is also going to do and I do not trust that the funding will come along in the future.

Some of the other issues that worry me about these bills are that they would repeal the I-728 class size money, it would increase graduation requirements (Core24) with no additional resources to support it, it repeals levy equalization which decreases district funding sources, and it changes the teacher licensing system for the 4th time in 12 years.

These unfunded reforms are the last thing we should be focusing on until we actually fund our schools at the levels that were first discussed in 1978. There is an old saying that says if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. But like everything else in this world if it is broke then please fix it but with that said, I can remember the last time I took my car in to get fixed and it had a pretty hefty price tag attached. I can guarantee you the mechanic would not have fixed it if I told him I had no funding source to pay for the fix. What this legislation would do though would be to force us to fix it anyway and leave it up to districts to figure out how to cover the costs. Is this how we want our school system to work?

While I have my opinions on the topic and there are many organizations that share my point of view and many that do not, I encourage each of you to read the legislation, make an informed decision, and contact your legislators in Olympia.