OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington lawmakers approved a sweeping set of changes to public schools Friday, five years after being slapped with a state Supreme Court order to fix how they pay for education.
They now get to wait and find out whether their work passes the legal test.
The budget Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law Friday adds $1.8 billion in new state spending for K-12 education over the next two years. Over four years, lawmakers said the plan will add about $7.3 billion in new state money for schools, while reducing the state's reliance on local school-district levies to pay for basic education.
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Inslee and top lawmakers said Friday they are confident those investments comply with the state Supreme Court's orders in the McCleary case. In the 2012 decision, the high court said the state was failing to meet its constitutional duty to fully fund the state's school system.
“I absolutely think this meets the constitutional obligation,” said Sen. Hans Zeiger, R-Puyallup and the chairman of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee. “And I think it’s landmark legislation that provides equity for kids across our state.”
Others still aren’t sure the state has gone far enough.
“This definitely does not satisfy what the court ordered,” said Tom Ahearne, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the McCleary case. “The question is, will the court say it’s enough to give them a pass?”
State lawmakers have spent the past few years struggling with the final piece of the McCleary ruling: Taking on the full costs of paying teachers and other school employees. Right now, a large chunk of those salary costs are being paid through local school-district levies, an arrangement the court has said is unconstitutional.
The state is being held in contempt of court for its lack of progress, with the court imposing daily fines of $100,000 a day.
Last year, the court ordered lawmakers to come up with final solution for McCleary by the time they adjourn in 2017. The court said the plan must be implemented by Sept. 1, 2018.
The Legislature responded this year with a plan that raises the state property tax, collects taxes from internet sales and closes some tax exemptions to help boost money for schools. At the same time, lawmakers approved a new cap on how much money school districts can raise through their local property tax levies — something that lawmakers said would help prevent another McCleary-type lawsuit in the future.
Now that a budget is signed, attorneys for the state have until about the end of July to file a report outlining why they think lawmakers have done enough to satisfy the court’s orders. They’ll argue that the court should lift the contempt sanctions against the state.
Ahearne said the McCleary plaintiffs will argue the opposite: that the sanctions should increase. Ahearne said that he'll file his brief by roughly the end of August.
The court will make a decision sometime after that.