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.

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.