Has there ever been a former student who filed a lawsuit against a state for receiving a poor education?

Tues Jan 24 Seattle schools will close 3 hours early because not enough has been budgeted to keep them open all day.

Who designs your graphs? That's terrible -- the greens are too hard to match to the key. And jargon like "backfill" (whatever that is) explains nothing to people who don't already know what it is.

I agree with Fnarf, and, please, please never use a 3D pie-chart. The third dimension only obscures that data.

Despite the color critique of the pie chart, this is one of the most accurate and easiest to read visual of how the underfunding of education has led to this court decision, the 49th worst class size in the US, 46th in the nation for per pupil funding, and the elimination of art/music/PE/libraries in our WA schools.
WA citizens need to tell their legislator to stop the cuts and go seek equitable revenue solutions such as increased taxes of the wealthy and corporations.

Is there any quantification of how much PTA and other fundraising activities contribute to a school's budget? The WA PTA (wastatepta.org) has an "annual report" page that contains a super-helpful video of their convention.

PTA fundraising is a whole 'nother issue, and largely responsible for the bulk of the resource inequality both within and between school districts.

I've suggested to the WA PTA that they collect the budgets of all the PTAs around the state and analyze them (together) to see what PTAs are supporting and at what level. They said it would be hard to do because everyone categorizes things differently, etc., but that was just a lame excuse in my opinion. If you just looked at the top 5 budget line items for each school, I'm pretty certain they would be similar across all schools. The dollar figures would be pretty amazing. In our school, we provide a bunch of support so teachers can buy what I consider basic supplies (including books!) for the kids. I know other schools fund art, music and other teachers because at least in Seattle, the District only provides very limited time for this instruction. It's ridiculous what doesn't get counted as under the "basic" funding rubric.