The first budget is out . . .

In a news conference today Governor Gregoire presented us with her supplemental budget proposal.  It comes as legislators prepare to begin the special session that she has directed.  As expected, it contains proposed cuts to public schools of $873.5 million out of the $2 billion all cut budget proposal.  You can find a summary of the proposed cuts on the WSSDA web page or on the OFM site here.

Big hits include the expected cut to Local Effort Assistance (LEA); revenue that property poor districts receive in an attempt to make raising local dollars more equitable across the state.  In the Governor's proposal our district would go from receiving about a million dollars this year to zero in a two year period.  The other big cut was a surprise to me.  She did not propose the cut that would have raised class size, but instead proposed a reduction in the school year from 180 to 176 student days, equivalent to about a 2.2% cut in salary for school staff.  I have already shared my disagreement with this proposal and the accompanying loss of learning time.

Saying she had been persuaded by those who talked with her about not increasing class sizes, the governor reluctantly is recommending cutting the school year from 180 days to 176 days, for a savings of nearly $100 million to the state. By cutting days, state funding for school employee salaries would be reduced by 2.2 percent, while transportation and MSOC would be reduced by a proportional amount.

There are many other proposed cuts in her budget that can be found on the sites referenced above.  She also has provided the legislators with revenue ideas including a half-cent raise in the sales tax that could buy back some of the proposed cuts.  Whether they can reach agreement on new revenue measures will become more evident when the session begins. 

For now, the only positive part of the Governor's proposal is that the cuts would not be enacted in this budget year.  Though positive, it does not make the future more promising.  Though I want to say enough is enough, this taste of reality from the Governor makes that more difficult.  Though we may applaud Superintendent Dorn for his response to the Governor's proposal, by taking this stance we may lose capacity to influence the final decisions.

The cuts being proposed would be catastrophic to basic education, and amply funding basic education is the state’s paramount duty. Our school year is already too short when compared to our economic competitors. We simply can’t go backward on school days.


From the perspective of the schoolchildren in the state – and that’s my perspective – either voters need to approve more revenue or the state Legislature needs to find another way to avoid these cuts. Cutting basic education simply can’t happen.