On Tuesday, June 4, Seattle Public Schools will meet with Seattle’s state legislative delegation to discuss the district’s proposal to close as many as 20 public schools. The district also faces a $129 million budget deficit, and acknowledges that closing schools won’t solve that deficit.
This meeting is happening behind closed doors, but it’s still an opportunity for the public to make it clear to the legislature that we expect them to step up with the funding our schools and students need. If legislators don’t, districts are going to balance their budgets on the backs of students.
There have been a lot of claims made recently regarding the state of public education funding, in Seattle and in Washington State. We’ve been working since 2015 to tackle this issue, and along the way we’ve learned a lot about what’s really happening. So we’re going to share some of those insights and facts — and they show that school budget deficits are caused by the state legislature’s failure to fully fund public education.
1. The education funding deal adopted in 2017 to address the McCleary case caused current school district financial problems. It has left our schools without the funding they need to properly educate our students or even meet their ongoing basic education needs, although federal stimulus papered over these problems for several years. It has created a structural budget shortfall for school districts across the state, including Seattle. We went into further detail on this in an article we wrote in 2022.
That deal has underfunded basic education and underfunds educator salaries. Districts are now back in the same situation the McCleary family sued to stop: reliant on the passage of a local levy. The state capped local levies and promised to provide ample funding from the state to replace it. That simply has not happened. Given that it was a deal made with the Republicans who controlled the State Senate at the time, it would seem that a Democratic majority would be strongly interested in fixing our education funding system so that our schools are receiving the funds they need.
2. It’s not just Seattle. Nearly a hundred school districts across the state had to make budget cuts for this school year. Bellevue closed three schools. Schools in Marysville, Yelm, Olympia, Moses Lake, and many other places are facing serious financial crisis. Three districts north of Everett are under fiscal monitoring by OSPI, a number that is expected to grow. Education in Washington State is on the brink of catastrophe.
3. Declining enrollment didn’t cause the budget deficit. SPS’s own numbers show that if the district regained the 4,900 students that it has lost since 2019, they would get an extra $66 million in revenue – but would incur an extra $54 million in costs, leaving just $12 million to balance the budget. This means that SPS’s budget woes do not stem from the loss of enrollment. Even if we brought back 4,900 students, the district would still be in fiscal crisis. School districts around the state are experiencing budget problems without having lost as much enrollment.
4. SEA’s 2022 contract didn’t cause the deficit either. The 2017 education funding deal eliminated previous funding models that sustained adequate pay for educators, and it was not replaced by anything that provided similar resources for districts. The regionalization procedure as adopted and implemented by the legislature fails to provide schools with the funds they need to properly pay teachers and avoid worsening an existing teacher shortage. The result is schools are forced to pit important needs against each other, which is unacceptable.
5. The legislature has failed to keep pace with inflation, and the result is they are slowly defunding the schools. Data from OSPI made it clear that state funding for public education has declined by nearly $1 billion since 2022 when adjusted for inflation. The proportion of the state operating budget that goes to K-12 public schools has fallen from the 50% recommended by the Quality Education Council to just 43%. This is exacerbating the crisis that the education funding deal in 2017 created.
6. Closing schools does not solve the district’s budget deficit. According to SPS’s own publicly available numbers, they face a deficit of about $129 million for 2025-26. Closing 20 schools saves at most $40 million, again according to their numbers. That assumes the best case scenario in terms of savings and the least amount of enrollment loss triggered by the closures. Yet there would still be $89 million or so for the district to have to cut, ensuring that the schools that remain will have more students but fewer resources to teach them. Superintendent Brent Jones has told the public that SPS intends to ask the legislature to close that deficit, and he is right to do so.
Mass school closures have also failed to achieve fiscal stability in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia that have attempted them, and San Antonio found last year that “closing schools does not make a district more equitable.” More than 1,000 people have signed an open letter opposing SPS’s closure plan.
For our purposes here, what’s most important to know is that SPS will not come close to solving its budget deficit by closing schools. Only more funding from the state legislature can solve this in a way that avoids cutting programs and services for students.
Here are some examples of what form that new revenue could take:
Wealth tax
Polling shows 67% of Washingtonians back a wealth tax on 2,000 of the state’s richest individuals, which can help fund our public schools. Such widespread public support means a wealth tax shouldn’t be difficult or controversial. But legislators failed to act on it in 2023 or 2024.
SB 5486 and HB 1473 would have create such a wealth tax. It was co-sponsored by 43 of 58 House Democrats and 20 of 29 Senate Democrats. It did not even receive a vote in committee in either chamber. But with strong support from the public and legislators, it could return in the 2025 session.
The legislature must pass the wealth tax and ensure that a sufficient amount of the money it raises is allocated to K-12 public school districts to help provide stable long-term funding for our schools.
Corporate tax loopholes
Washington State gives out at least 600 loopholes and tax breaks to corporations. According to pre-pandemic estimates, this costs the state tens of billions of dollars in potential revenue. Our state doesn’t do a good job of tracking their effectiveness. Legislators could close some or all of these tax loopholes to help fund our public schools.
Special education funding
Whatever revenue sources are chosen, the state legislature must also fully fund special education. It’s not only the right thing to do — it also helps solve districts’ budget woes. For years the legislature has capped the amount of funding districts receive for special education. The existence of that cap is appalling. Right now, the cap is 16% of enrollment, after the legislature raised it slightly in the 2023 and 2024 sessions. But quite a few districts have more students than that who need services.
As a result of this cap, the legislature forces districts into an impossible choice between spending their other funds to provide those services or meet other educational needs. Legislators are pitting students against each other. It’s awful and it has to stop.
P.S.: Want to help mobilize the public to push our legislators to fully fund public education? Sign up here to volunteer!
