The budget committee will hear from the governor’s office and panels of school districts and stakeholders during the morning work session.
Participating school districts will be from Seattle Public Schools, Vancouver Public Schools, Yakima School District, and WSSDA President Mary Fertakis (Tukwila). Stakeholders will include the State Board of Education and Washington State PTA, among two others.
The budget work session will be immediately followed by another work session on Committee Chair Rep. Ross Hunter’s property tax proposal (refer to the Dec. 2 Legislative Update). School districts will be represented for the discussion, including the Monroe School District, Yakima School District, Seattle Public Schools, and Lake Stevens Director David Iseminger, who has been working with Rep. Hunter on his proposal. Iseminger is a member of the WSSDA Board of Directors.
A look ahead
House members who aren’t on the Ways & Means Committee have been allowed to return to their districts for the remainder of the week. The budget committee will hold the work session Wednesday and a public hearing on Thursday, Dec. 8. No committee meetings or floor action are scheduled for Friday.
In the other chamber, Senate budget and policy committees continue to hold hearings and work sessions. The Senate Early Learning & K-12 Committee will hold a work session on the Levy/LEA Technical Working Group report Thursday, Dec. 8 at 10 a.m. in Senate Hearing Room 1. Public testimony will not be taken, although a panel that includes school district representation is planned.
All committee meetings can be tracked on TVW.
Everything old is new again
Districts with an interest in the 2009 and 2010 legislation that put in place a new definition of basic education and a schedule for implementation (with a target of full funding by 2018) should be aware that last year’s SB 5475 has been referred to the Senate EL & K-12 committee for consideration. (The plan and schedule are commonly referred to as ESHB 2261 (2009) and SHB 2776 (2010)).
While a public hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet, it is seen as one of the “necessary to implement the budget” bills the Legislature will need to pass to align with recommendations for the 2012 supplemental budget. The bill serves as a starting place, and elements are likely to change.
In its most recent form before the Legislature, most of the bill changes would remove the 2018 implementation date and would replace it with language along the lines of “an implementation schedule adopted by the legislature.”
In addition, Section 11 would direct the State Board of Education (SBE) to synthesize the various technical working group reports by January 1, 2014, and to recommend to the Legislature an implementation schedule – including a prioritization plan – for the enhancements to the funding formulas and increases in basic education instructional programs.
Under the same section, the SBE would also be asked to make recommendations about how to fund I-728 (class size reduction) and on significant policy changes such as common core and the teacher/principal evaluation program, also by January 2014.
Section 12 would add another element to the Compensation Technical Working Group’s workload, namely whether I-732 (teacher COLAs) should be removed as a separate funding source and included in basic education.
Finally, Section 13 would create a budget stabilization account that would provide funding to implement ESHB 2261. The account would receive 60 percent of all general state revenues that exceed the previous fiscal biennium’s general state revenues. The idea is similar to a proposal floated by school director Iseminger under his strategy for full funding of K-12 education and was offered as an amendment to the bill last session by Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens.
