Education Reform

The high stakes game of chicken played by the House and Senate education leaders that involved several critical K 12 education issues was interrupted by Governor Gregoire’s intervention.  Gregoire forced both sides to negotiate a conclusion to the impasse so that her coveted race to the top issue would be resolved.  In the final hours, they were able to reach an agreement good enough that both sides being able to declare victory.  And who were the winners?  K 12 students, families and employees. The agreement they reached far surpassed my expectations, especially considering the wide gulf between the two bodies’ positions at the start of the day.

End of Session
Early on in the session, I thought that the last bills that the legislature would consider would be the levy bill (SHB 2893), the Race to the Top (RTTP) bill (E2SSB 6696), and the Quality Education Council (QEC) bill, (SHB 2776).  My thinking was that with so many bad things going on with the budget, the legislature would most likely want to end the session on a good note.  Nothing is better to end on than doing something good for K 12 education (this is because with 1 million kids going to school, you can’t go wrong doing something positive for it).  Well, I was wrong.  The last bill was an early education bill (which followed the QEC and RTTP bills).

Here’s what the impact of each of the bills starting with the one that passed first, earlier yesterday afternoon, the levy bill.

Levy Bill
The legislature’s response to their responsibility to fund basic education in difficult fiscal times was to give school districts more money for levy equalization (approximately $26 million).  They also gave districts the ability to raise more funds locally by raising the levy lid 4% and giving them the ability to count revenue they would have received (what I call “phantom revenue”) from the state for Initiative 728 and 732 (and they may also count the money they would have received if the legislature cuts K-4 funding in the 2010 supplemental budget – something they haven’t done yet but is still being debated).

• The levy equalization increase is an across the board increase of 2% for all school districts who receive levy equalization.
• The 4% levy authority increase allows school districts to ask for more money from their local taxpayer.  A school district who already has a levy in place can take advantage of this by running a separate levy for the additional levy authority.
• Finally, the “phantom revenue” features that allow districts to count revenue they do not receive so they can establish their levy base at a higher level (and thereby collect more from their local community), was scheduled to expire in 2013 but now is scheduled to expire in 2017.

All these provisions are temporary through  2017.

Race to the Top
The major focus of this bill is helping schools who are chronically failing.  The premise for the bill is that the stronger the provisions in this bill are for helping failing schools the more likely Washington state would qualify a portion of the federal Race to the Top funds.  This bill implements state intervention procedures and improved teacher and principal evaluation procedures.  Though classified employees are not the focus of this bill, there are some features of the intervention model that may affect classified employees (most likely a paraeducator) who work in a “failing” school.

Intervention Models

There are four intervention models that will be used in persistently lowest-performing schools:

1. Turnaround: A district would be required to replace the principal, rehire no more than 50 percent of the staff, adopt a new governance structure for the school, provide high quality professional development, and use data to identify and implement a research-based instructional program.
2. Restart: A district must close the school and reopen it either as a charter school or under the management of an external education management organization.
3. Closure: A district closes the school and enrolls the students in other schools in the district that are higher-performing.
4. Transformation: In addition to replacing the principal, a variety of required and optional reform activities are outlined in the federal guidelines.

Other features that may affect classified employees are:

• Each school district is required to have performance criteria and evaluation procedures for classified employees.
• If the improvement plan identifies something within our contract that is hindering student improvement, the district has the right to request that the parties renegotiate that term of the contract.  Impasses will be handled by PERC and if necessary, Superior Court.  When contracts expire, they must re-negotiate them with the understanding they can be opened by this law.

QEC Bill
Many features of this bill, especially the increased funds, will have a very positive effect on classified employee services.  The first feature to note is for the first time, the basic education act will identify which classified employee positions in a school district are basic education.  And even more important, along with those identified positions will be the FTE that will be funded by the state.

This is what it looks like:

One of the most important aspects of the funding formula for classified employees is that we were able to get the 58.75:1 ratio into the basic education act.  What that means is that it can not be taken away from us in future legislative sessions!  What a relief.

Other important aspects of the bill

• the new transportation funding formula will start implementation in the 2011-13 biennium and will be fully implemented by the 2013-15 biennium (this increases state funding for transportation $125 million per year);
• all day kindergarten will continue to be implemented until it is fully implemented across the state by the 2017-18 school year;
• starting with the 2011-13 school year, the K-3 class-size will be reduced to 17:1 by the 2017-18 school year;
• the new maintenance, supplies, and operating costs (MSOC) formula and enhanced funding will begin in the 2011-13 biennium and will be fully implemented by the 2015-16 school year;
• the QEC will make recommendations by December 1, 2010, to assure adequate levels of state-funded classified staff to support essential school and district services.

The cost of these enhancements when they are fully implemented in the 2017-18 school year may be close to $1.4 billion per year.  This is why PSE got involved in the education reform effort last year.  We wanted the state to take responsibility for basic education support services.  With this bill, they go a long way to meeting that challenge!

Posted by: Doug Nelson on 3/12/2010 at 11:03:00 AM