With the latest kafka-esque announcement from Seattle Public Schools (SPS) delaying the announcement of 20 elementary schools closing next year, frustrated parents and educators who have attended over five district-led, citywide community meetings in the last month are boiling with good questions: How can we stop school closures? And how can we equitably fund our schools?
The problem is that the proper target for these questions isn’t really the school board; rather, it’s our state lawmakers. Unfortunately, state lawmakers don’t reconvene in Olympia until January. And even then, few legislators have had the gall to “amply fund education,” the state’s “paramount duty,” according to the constitution. Why? Well, to do that they would need to make transformative change. And to make that transformative change, they’d need to stand up to the rich.
Unfortunately, our state legislators are no Robin Hoods. Even when they know what’s coming, they don’t act responsibly. For instance, everyone knew one-time COVID relief funds would run out, and yet schools across the country and all over Washington find themselves about to run off fiscal cliffs. Last session, experts such as University of Washington Professor David Knight directly warned state lawmakers about this impending budget crisis, but during the 2024 legislative session our state representatives and senators appeared to have little appetite to meaningfully address the looming deficits. Kinda weird, given that they’ve acted with urgency when industry faces a crisis, like when they held a special session to bailout Boeing in 2013.
Here in Seattle, we face projected deficits of $105 million for 2024-25, but also $129 million for 2025-26, and $153 million for the year after. To save our schools and fully fund our education statewide, we need to pressure state and local lawmakers to expand current progressive taxes and to pass new ones.
Our current tax code, which is the 49th most regressive one in the country, punishes the working class with property and sales taxes. The silver bullet needed to eliminate that problem, some argue, involves restructuring our code around much more progressive taxes. Part of that restructuring would mean passing a graduated income tax and then hoping the state Supreme Court overturns precedent. Unfortunately, instead of letting it go to a ballot this November, last session the Legislature approved a billionaire-backed initiative banning an income tax, signaling that they won’t pass such a tax any time soon. But there is still hope.
One success so far, fingers-crossed, is the capital gains tax passed by the Legislature in 2021. That tax has brought in over $900 million to our state, but it also faces a billionaire-backed challenge at the ballot box this November. If the voters save it, then the Legislature could expand it as a short-term solution for immediate funds at SPS.
Short of instituting an income tax, this election cycle opens up the opportunity to elect a supermajority of Democrats to the State Legislature. If that happens, then with enough pressure they could change the state constitution to lower the voting threshold for passing local school bonds from 60% to a simple majority, which would allow districts out east to tax themselves more easily. But electing a supermajority of Democrats looks tough, and pushing that party to actually use their majority for good instead of just trying to preserve it is always an uphill battle.
In the longer term, the Legislature could pass a wealth tax, which is supported by 67% of the state, according to a 2023 poll of likely voters. However, some powerful players haven’t really gotten behind that tax. In their Spring Representative Assembly, the Washington Education Association (WEA) let a resolution fail that would have provided funding for a campaign to support such a tax, a sign that the WEA today is not the ally the Grange had when they fought together for an income tax in 1929. WEA did, however, pass a resolution to support the defense against the initiative that would repeal the capital gains tax, an important but defensive move. If you are an educator or union member, you can pressure the WEA to take more transformative actions.
Another way to help is to join the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America (SDSA), where there are rumors of a workgroup dedicated to taking a working-class approach to fully funding our schools. Part of those talks include reaching across to the east side of the state to build more working-class support to tax the rich and fund our schools.
If you really want to exercise your frustration at a local school board meeting, then tell them to add progressive revenue to their legislative priorities, like they did last year, and to move in solidarity with higher-poverty districts across the state and on the outskirts of our city.
At the end of the day, the solution to Seattle’s deficits doesn’t lie in asking to speak to the closest manager. It lies in joining those of us already doing the work in our local rank-and-file union caucuses, or in joining our local, grassroots progressive tax coalitions and not stopping until we are all free. After all, we can all agree that the Washington State Legislature has a “paramount duty” to make sure we do not become Florida.
Oliver Treanor Miska, 33, is a queer Seattleite, educator, community organizer, and lobbyist for educational justice policy in Washington State. Throughout the development of this article, they benefited from the wisdom of many elders and experts. As a community organizer, Oliver has held leadership roles within Seattle Democratic Socialist of America and Washington Ethnic Studies Now, where they co-lead a statewide legislative coalition. Oliver is also a partner in the fight for equitable spending in our schools with a coalition convened by the Equity in Education Coalition. Informing their work as an education policy nerd, Oliver is in their sixth year of teaching in both public and independent schools in Seattle. To contact them, email: legislativecommittee@waethnicstudies.com
Sadly we must do two things at once: demand more funding, AND manage the budget and reality that SPS faces. This School Board has not adequately overseen a district to meet the needs of students with the resources it has – it kept the doors closed during COVID for too long, eliminated academic rigor, and pitted the remaining middle class families in the system against the poorest, leading to the enrollment crisis we see now. The legislature isn’t coming to save us, and the Board is pulling all the wrong levers towards a misguided vision of what the district should be.
We can have hard conversations. Concerned parents aren’t “Karens” and listening to distressed families is what our public servant Board members are charged to do. Please stop characterizing the invested families at SPS this way.
Before we dump billions more into the education system please provide one example of how education outcomes improved after the McCleary decision when we dramatically increased school funding. In my view the entirety of that increase went to educator salaries which is great for them but had no impact on actually improving educational outcomes. As @1 noted there are some broader issues with SPS and public schools in general that money alone isn’t going to solve.
Funny how The Starger publishes this but has yet to address their disastrous endorsements for the Board last time around, all of whom are supporting these closures. Smith and the Board sneered at the very idea of closures as “fear-mongering”. Perhaps an article reviewing how they came to be so wrong is due?
Near the end of the headline post, the other shoe drops:
“Another way to help is to join the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America (SDSA), where there are rumors of a workgroup dedicated to taking a working-class approach to fully funding our schools. Part of those talks include reaching across to the east side of the state to build more working-class support to tax the rich and fund our schools.”
First, the SDSA barely fended off a first-time challenger to the SDSA’s incumbent Seattle City Council Member. Second, “rumors of a workgroup” would easily win the Weakest Reason Ever Award for joining anything. Third, if folks in Eastern Washington ever saw an alphabet-soup Seattle org’ with ‘Socialist’ in it coming towards them, they’d avoid it at all costs.
An hour ago, the district delayed this announcement again. By my count, this is the third delay after stop and start conversations at least 10 months in, and disrespectful to families who have been tracking this closely and simply want to plan their lives. By contrast, Bellevue held a similar closure discussion, had some tough conversations, and are on the other side. Process is everything and has nothing to do with money. This Board is not adequately exercising oversight of a very dysfunctional district and it is damaging to families and the financial picture.
Oliver Treanor Miska Is yelling the wrong things to the wrong people as well.
You cannot expect the Legislature to support progressive taxes that don’t have real-world support (as in at-the-polls in an election vs a push-poll public opinion survey).
If the Cap Gains Tax and Climate Commitment Act survive at the polls in November (a very big ‘if’…), then there’s potentially a viable path forward for a graduated income tax. Maybe.
Until then, why should legislators stick their necks out?
An hour ago, the district delayed this announcement again. By my count, this is the third delay after stop and start conversations at least 10 months in, and disrespectful to families who have been following and simply want to plan their lives. By contrast, Bellevue initiated closure discussion, had tough conversations, and are on the other side. Process is everything and has nothing to do with money. This Board is not adequately exercising oversight of a very dysfunctional district and it is damaging to families and the district financial picture.
@4 I’m disappointed you beat me to mocking “rumors of a workgroup.” But anyway, I’m sure ‘the bosses’ will be quaking in their leather wingtips at these rumors.
Sorry, but there are several examples around the state where districts did not use one-time COVID dollars to fund ongoing expenses, such as salaries, and didn’t assume that students were coming back. SPS grossly mismanaged this situation, and even a progressive friendly Legislature is not going to go out of its way to help.
@6 — She is yelling the wrong things at the right people. Look, I get why people don’t like regressive taxes. They suck. But at the end of the day you are much better off raising regressive taxes than not raising them at all. Raise the state sales tax. Raise the property tax. Whatever it takes, just do it.
One of the big misconceptions is that in places like Scandinavia they only tax the wealthy. Far from it. The income tax is less progressive than ours (poor people pay income tax). They have a nationwide VAT tax (similar to a sales tax). For us to raise the same kind of money we would have to tax the middle class a lot more. This would be good. To quote Matt Yglesias:
The most important thing is to just have lots of tax revenue. Public expenditures are pretty progressive in their impact everywhere, and the difference between a very progressive and a not-so-progressive system is mostly that the more progressive ones are bigger. So while liberals have no reason to give in to conservative demands to make the existing revenue scheme less progressive—by adopting a flat tax, say, or replacing the income tax with a consumption tax—there’s very good reason to basically be looking for revenue by any means necessary. If it’s easier, politically, to get some center-right politicians on board for new consumption taxes than for higher income taxes, then it’s incumbent on progressives to walk through that door and take the revenue.
The SPS board knew the current SEA contract was beyond the projected revenue but approved it anyway. Since then, SPS has lost students to private schools exacerbating projected budget shortfalls.
No one from the state is coming to save SPS – Seattle will need to figure this out on our own. And in that vein, we need to get more creative about local financial support. We also need more technocrats, less organizers (getting shit done takes more than filling a public comment session with protesters ).
Let’s go on the offensive with local funding – if the state decides to sue us, so be it (let’s see how pissing off the largest liberal voting block in the state plays out).
Good for you, Totoman. He misses the forest for the trees here.
Aramis, spot on. The Stranger recommendations for school board were wrong and terrible.
Buddhamat, fightin’ words – I like it.
“If you really want to exercise your frustration at a local school board meeting, then tell them to add progressive revenue to their legislative priorities, like they did last year, and to move in solidarity with higher-poverty districts across the state and on the outskirts of our city. “
Well, you see one item on this week’s Board agenda is to cut back from two meetings a month to one single meeting. So that’s fewer opportunities to speak to the Board. (And fyi, President Liza Rankin called public comments “performance.” Yeah.) So it’s gonna be harder to say anything to the Seattle Schools Board.
The Legislature is not going to listen and yes, as Buddharat said, SPS is going to have to do it on their own. Question is, will it be in partnership with parents or not?
Using one time COVID funds for ongoing expenses is financial malfeasance.
Raindrop, charters are a different animal (the WA State Supreme Court said so under our constitution). So every public education measure is NOT going to include them.
Do they get funded as real public schools do? Nope and that’s because the charter law says a certain amount of money has to get set aside in order to oversee them. There’s a whole Commission that does that. Charter schools KNOW this going in so being whiny about it is not a good look.
And give them access to levy dollars? Are they guaranteeing the district in which they sit that they – the charter schools – will provide funds for those levy elections? Crickets. Why the hell should they get levy dollars they don’t have to work for? Please.
Parents have voted with their feet and it’s not for charter schools.
One curious thing about SPS and school closures is that any existing charter school within the district boundaries has the right of first refusal to use closed school buildings. Might be interesting to see what happens.
A cop’s starting salary is higher than a teacher’s salary after they’ve been in the district for multiple years and have had 90+ professional development credits.
But, you know…we can’t fund the schools.