Olympia: Legislature Opens with Focus on Education

— from the League of Women Voters, Ann Murphy, President, Jasmine Karpelman, Newsletter Editor —

2016 Legislative Session Overview

Jan. 10, 2017 –During this short, 60-day, session, a major focus of the legislature will be on education and the revenue needed to meet the requirements of the McCleary lawsuit to provide ample funding for education. So two of the top priorities for the League this year will be to assure that fair and adequate new revenues are authorized and that the legislature adopts a complete plan for complying with the order in the McCleary case. This order requires a plan to achieve ample funding for education – not just what will be achieved by 2018, but a full explanation of how the legislature will achieve the required goals.

We will be watching for a bill with the Court-ordered plan to fully fund K-12 education with stable, dependable State resources by the 2017-18 school year. The Legislature must produce this plan in order to remove the contempt citation and the $100,000 a day penalty imposed by the Supreme Court.

The Governor’s proposed Supplemental Budget, released on December 17, 2015, contains funding for new programs and non-basic education programs but nothing for the McCleary issues (continued funding for all-day kindergarten and K-3 reduced class size for example). We will continue to advocate for full funding for the public schools that over one million students attend and will watch out for some sort of “fix” for the unconstitutional charter schools.

League, among many others in the state, has argued strenuously in support of new, fair funding that could do what must be done for education and also assure that other critical state services remain viable. The League again calls upon the Legislature to adopt fair new funding, such as the capital gains tax, to meet the state’s many needs and to do so as soon as possible.

(To read the full LWV overview, go to: participate.lwv.org/189188 )