Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn is nothing if not blunt. When asked if the state is meeting its constitutional “paramount duty … to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders,” Dorn unhesitatingly responds: “No. No we’re not.”
Not exactly a stunning observation in and of itself, if not for the fact that it’s coming from the statewide elected official tasked with overseeing this paramount duty.
Last month, when Gov. Chris Gregoire asked department heads to each propose another 10 percent in cuts from their own budgets, Dorn politely refused, insisting we’re already underfunding K-12 education. But with the legislature preparing to go into special session to close another $2 billion budget hole, he’s bracing himself for further cuts. Possible money-saving targets, Dorn warns, include levy equalization, K-3 enhancement, or even shortening the school year. But Dorn suggests that if legislators want to cut basic education any further, “maybe they should try to pass a constitutional amendment redefining the paramount duty to a lower standard.”
Dorn hopes that a state Supreme Court ruling on the paramount duty issue could come prior to the special session, forcing legislators to do the right thing. “When one branch of government tells another that it’s not doing its job, it can change behavior,” Dorn suggests. Dorn himself was a member of the legislature in 1993, when he joined fellow Democrats in voting to raise taxes in order to sustain education funding. “I knew by taking those votes, I would likely lose my next election,” says Dorn. He did.
“It was one of the best votes I ever took.”
Here’s hoping today’s legislators prove just as selfless.
Time to cancel the tax giveaways that don’t have 2/3rds voter approval.
Like for corporations and for “services” and for non-profits.
Those are the growing areas of the budget, and Dorn is right.
Primary means 50% not 40%.
Start by canceling the Deep Tolled Tunnel and don’t rebuild anything until we actually have revenue …
Whatever the corporate controlled political parties want is what we will get.
Praise be the corporations!! Let us all sacrifice all to their mighty promise of one day..someday providing us meager pay at dead end jobs if we only ensure their low low taxes.
And we offer up our children’s future on the altar of corporate greed. Praise the corporations!!
personally, i won’t be happy until kids across the state are in classrooms of 60 or more students. the people of washington believe in defunding the state? let them feel the consequences.
@3 that is fine for tax-subsidized Red Districts, but not us Blue Districts.
I would be interested in finding out how we made “ample provision” for the education of kids 40 years ago with 1/3 of the per-pupil spending we have now. How the money is being spent is a more important question than how much money they have to spend.
Cost of everything doubles roughly every 25 year or so. Imagine that.
@4 medicine the whole state deserves, imo. maybe the subsidizing counties get pissed & cut off the subsidized? i don’t know. i just know that we need things to happen that will spread the suffering to everyone if we are going to stop thinking about things from our current perspective (only do things that help the rich) & try to rebuild a perspective that takes into account the needs of the whole populace & the state itself. the schools are a great place to affect everyone w/ what will be a hell of a slap across the face.
@6, those are inflation adjusted dollars. Imagine that.
Look at the charts, and ask: Do you really think we have an education funding problem?
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obama-job…
@9, I’ve yet to hear anyone who supports spending more on education justify that position when confronted with the facts in those charts.
For crissakes. We’re requiring the public schools to do about 10,000 more things than we required them to do in the 1970s. Cost of transportation is rising considerably higher than those inflation-adjusted dollars. School buses and fuel cost money. School districts have to transport huge numbers of students in far-flung suburbs due to sprawl. We have to provide education for kids with all kinds of problems, who require all kinds of special adaptations – we have to provide some kids practically their own counselors and tutors! We have to educate kids with Down syndrome. In the 1970s, we didn’t mainstream learning-disabled kids, and kids with behavioral problems were simply terminated.
Computers cost just a TAD bit more than 30-year-old textbooks, and districts are required to provide computing for education. Districts are also required to archive any and all computerized data: files, emails, student reports, lesson plans, everything, and archive appliances and storage costs money. Districts are required to remediate mold and asbestos issues, at enormous cost.
If we just had 35 kids sitting at antique desks (all well-behaved kids, of course, or they’d be expelled), didn’t have any extracurricular activities, and teachers kept grades and reports in an old spiral notebook, yeah, sure, we could actually compare the costs to 40 years ago. But you’re comparing apples to pineapples.
(Um. Read “expelled” for “terminated” in that first paragraph. Wishful thinking.)
(And districts are constantly fighting lawsuits, now, too, at enormous cost – lawsuits by terminated employees, lawsuits by parents whose little snowflake got a D, lawsuits because somebody’s kid got a rusty locker.)