Washington’s Legislature on Friday passed a state budget with mere hours to spare — the governor signed it after 11 p.m. — leaving the public scrambling to get a look at what it will mean for the state’s residents and school districts.
The $43.7 billion budget includes a historic education funding plan that adds nearly $2 billion for the state’s K-12 schools. The funds come due to the 2012 McCleary decision that mandated the state to fully fund public education and break school districts’ reliance on local levies. That sounds like an improvement, a way to ensure equity in education regardless of the economic status of the school district (wealthier areas can have higher levies, while poorer areas have lower, if any, levies). But the way the Legislature chose to fund the increases is not all-around positive.
Those nearly $2 billion in funds earmarked for education come at a price to taxpayers in the form of higher property taxes, something that Puget Sound region residents especially will feel. The statewide property tax per $1,000 of assessed value increases from $1.89 to $2.70 under the new budget. The King County Executive’s Office on Friday released a statement responding to the budget that included projections of property tax increases throughout the county. Vashon’s taxes are set to increase $630 per year come 2021.
“Great that they finally funded education. Concerned about the way they are doing it,” Executive Dow Constantine said in the Friday statement.
And there are concerns beyond the property tax piece. Due to the McCleary decision’s mandate to prevent local levies from providing the majority of school district funding, some districts in wealthy areas of the state — Mercer Island and Vashon — could potentially lose money if the current levies are beyond the cap that will be instituted in 2019. Vashon Island School District board member Bob Hennessey said Friday he was concerned about the possibility. But the budget’s repercussions on Vashon’s school district are still unknown and answers will not be likely until the end of this week, according to the district’s Executive Director of Business & Operations Matt Sullivan.
While the state budget accomplishes a goal that has been too long coming, it should not be seen as a glorified fix to the state’s education funding crisis. Only time will tell if the budget accomplishes what it was created to do, but until then, it needs to be scrutinized and analyzed as the last-minute push to prevent a government shutdown resulted in a process that was anything but transparent.
