By John Stang for Crosscut.com
There are the “going nuclear” options. And there’s the “trust us” scenario.
Washington’s Supreme Court quizzed attorneys Wednesday about the best ways for the court to make sure state legislators will comply with its 2012 ruling that the state meet its constitutional duty to provide a “basic education” for Washington’s kids. So far, lawmakers have tackled only the easy, non-controverisal fix-it measures, but remain deadlocked on if and how they should raise enough money to improve teacher-student ratios in Grades K-3, the most expensive fix-it measure required by the court’s 2012 decision.
The current K-3 ratio is one teacher per 25.3 students (in a non-poverty school). In its 2012 “McCleary ruling,” the Supreme Court ordered Washington to comply with the one-teacher-per-17 students goal set by a 2009 state law. Complying with that lowered ratio would mean hiring many more teachers, and building additional classrooms by the 2018-2019 school year.
Attorney Thomas Ahearne, representing the McCleary family and other plaintiffs, and Deputy Solicitor General Alan D. Copsey, representing the Legislature, argued before the court Wednesday [Sept. 3] on whether justices should punish the Legislature for lagging on compliance. “The question has been where is the money going to come from,” said Copsey, explaining the delay. “That question takes time to resolve.”
(to read the full article, go to:
crosscut.com/2014/09/03/education/supreme-court-pushes-legislature-mcleary-johnstang/ )
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Research has shown over and over that the number one factor in providing a quality education for children is class size: the smaller the class size, the better the education. Fewer kids fall through the cracks, and everyone gets more attention. That’s why at one point California mandated that K-3 classes needed to be no larger than 20 students. Our students are coming to school with more and more issues from the environment outside the school, and schools cannot help enough in dealing with these issues in overly large classes.
Where would the money come from? More importantly, when are we as a society going to get serious about funding a quality education? Our legislators are constantly mandating new requirements for schools, hoping that our schools can solve our societal problems. But such mandates are empty without the funds to support them. There are all sorts of sources of revenue that can be tapped, but this requires making tough choices, deciding that our children are more of a priority than some of the tax breaks we now allow.
I taught school in Oregon for 20 years, and we faced exactly the same issues. I volunteer at the local elementary school here and see students with all kinds of different challenges, challenges that most of us never had to face as kids. The staff and administrators are trying to meet these challenges the best they can, but they are woefully short of the personnel needed. Teachers work ungodly long hours, including the weekend, trying to take care of all the issues.
It’s time for us as a society to step up, to put a higher value on those that matter most to us, our children. Let’s be sure our state legislators hear from us so that they do what is needed to bring the highest quality to public school in Washington state.
David Turnoy
Retired elementary teacher
Orcas