“No matter how you look at it,” Washington state lawmakers shortchange public K-12 education by about $4 billion each year, Superintendent Chris Reykdal wrote in a letter to outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee that summarized the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s annual operating budget request.
The recent history of the Washington Legislature’s spending on public education is why Reykdal asked Inslee’s budget writers to spend about $3 billion for K-12 schools in the 2025-27 biennium. Reykdal is also up for reelection this year.
The infusion would be an important step toward bridging the ever-widening money gap from the state’s peak investment in K-12 education in 2019-20, which came after a series of admonishments by the state Supreme Court to the Legislature for skirting its constitutional duty to fully fund public education. There was a gradual decline of dollars and arguably, priority, for K-12 education in subsequent budget cycles.¹
The state is required to fully fund basic education for K-12 students. The definition of “basic education” doesn’t fully encompass everything required to run a public school, but fulfills the minimum requirements as defined by lawmakers.² The state has failed to uphold its minimum constitutional requirements to pay for basic education, Reykdal says, and in the agency’s budget request, about $1.5 billion of the $3 billion requested by OSPI from 2025-27 would go toward basic education.
The budget priorities OSPI identified in the 2025-27 budget would be universally beneficial for all 295 public school districts and six tribal schools overseen by the agency, Reykdal told us in an interview. One example is an infusion of cash for materials, supplies, and operating costs—such as building utilities and insurance—which have skyrocketed for public schools due to inflation.
Constitutionally mandated or not, the likelihood of $3 billion being added to the existing spending on K-12 education and clearing the many budgetary hurdles is another thing entirely.³
First, the $3 billion for public schools would need to appear in Inslee’s final biennium budget recommendation to lawmakers, which will be released in December. Next year, the new Legislature will negotiate the details of the actual budget, a highly political process. In the spring, the newly elected governor would need to sign off on the final deal.
Long Road to Full Funding
One of the biggest barriers to this process is the lack of a new source of money to pay for these expensive enhancements to K-12 education. Billions were added to K-12 education in the past. The halcyon times for K-12 education, also known as the 2019-20 Legislative session, shows that adding billions to K-12 education is possible—if you have a revenue source and major political will.
In 2019-20 more than 50% of the state budget went to K-12 education and about $2 billion in new spending for K-12 public education was added. Notably, lawmakers passed an additional state property tax levy in the 2019-20 session, which generated about $935 million for public education. The money was then deposited in the Education Legacy Trust Account, according to a history of the fund from the Economic Revenue and Forecast Council.
The Education Legacy Trust Account should be familiar to readers as the place where revenue from the capital gains tax was deposited starting in 2023. The ELTA account pays for components of K-12 education and early learning and child care programs, but bear in mind the ELTA fund wasn’t authorized to invest in early learning until new legislation in 2021 that expanded its investment potential.
When asked about the lack of a new revenue source to support the $3 billion requested for public schools in the 2025-27 biennium request, Reykdal said his job is to design an operating budget recommendation, not a new tax plan. Reykdal added that he supports reforms to Washington’s regressive tax code to bring in more money.
What’s in OSPI’s operating budget ask?
The biggest element in the request is for special education which has been drastically under resourced. The $1 billion for special education—about $300 million in 2025-26 and $700 million in 2026-27—would go toward removing a cap that limits the amount of money a school district can receive from the state to pay to educate students with disabilities; allowing students up to age 22 to receive special education services; and other improvements to special education.
Along with $1 billion more for special education in 2025-27, the state will need to spend about $152 million on transportation for high-risk students and about $350 million on materials, supplies, and operating costs for public schools, to comply with the minimum constitutional requirements defined by the McCleary decision of 2012, Reykdal says.
Some of that $350 million for MSOC represents a one-time 9.5% bump in state dollars that accounts for some of the added costs due to inflation that has left public schools in a major financial crisis.
Aside from the basic education requirements of the budget, Reykdal requested nearly $700 million for a pay increase for school classified staff, which includes paraeducators, school custodial workers, and other staff that keep schools functioning. The state dollars for pay increases would allow school districts to recruit and retain staff in these high-turnover positions, without having to dip into local levy dollars intended for school enrichment programs.
While the state is not constitutionally required to pay for school-based mental and behavioral health services or school lunches for hungry public school students, it’s these programs that make for a better education system, Reykdal says. The need for greater investment in school-based mental health services has been a frequent talking point in the upcoming election for Washington State Superintendent of Public Schools.
The 2025-27 budget request included about $52 million more for student mental health in schools plus a nearly $280 million boost in state dollars for the learning assistance program, which sends extra money to high poverty school districts.⁴
The $3 billion for K-12 education will be competing with other state agencies, advocacy groups, and cabinet offices for a finite amount of state money, but getting Inslee’s buy-in on the plan could give fully funding basic education and student mental health programs, among other vital K-12 services, a fighting chance. (Sara Kassabian)
Some costs of repealing the Climate Commitment Act
The Department of Transportation ran the numbers for lawmakers on Tuesday concerning some of the costs of repealing the Climate Commitment Act. They were anything but pretty for commuters hoping to hop on cleaner ferries anytime soon.
In its sit-down with the Senate Transportation Committee, WSDOT officials surmised that the CCA’s death would exacerbate the funding gap for Washington’s ailing ferry fleet—something that many depend on mightily.
As it stands now, WSDOT’s budget request for the upcoming 2025-27 biennium is about $75 million shy of meeting the construction costs for the five new electric ferries it has in the pipeline.
Removing CCA dollars from the equation would add about $115 million to the problem. Senate Republicans’ proposals to swap those electric ferries for the diesel-powered variety have been rebuffed by climate-minded Democrats eyeing cleaner, quieter rides.
WSDOT officials also broke the news that its budget request is about $49 million short of covering basic operations—crews, dispatch, security, etc. Beyond that, those five new ferries—whatever they’re powered by—will require about $30 million each year to cover the cost of engine room crews.
Should voters give Initiative 2117 the green light in November, the financial falloff for state coffers would also put public transit investment back about five years. Over the next biennium, that would mean chucking about $158 million for zero-fare youth bus rides; just under $33 million for zero-emission fleets; and about $9 million for tribal transit programs, per an analysis by the Washington State Transit Association.
Moreover, repealing the CCA would suck about $210 million from a dozen transit expansions in the pipeline statewide—including about $30 million for electrifying the King County metro buses; $50 million for the Spokane Transit Authority’s street bus rapid transit; and about $23 million for the electrification of the Tri-Cities’ Ben Franklin transit bus fleet. Voters have about one month to mull these numbers over before ballots go out mid-October. (Tim Gruver)
Campaign finance case against Let’s Go Washington
A long-simmering campaign finance case against conservative ballot initiative machine called Let’s Go Washington is set to go before the Public Disclosure Commission just weeks before voters consider the four measures backed by the committee.
The case stems largely from LGW’s in-bulk approach to initiative politics. Instead of setting up a separate committee for each initiative, it ran the signature-gathering effort for six initiatives through one committee last year and added a seventh measure in 2024. That prompted initiative opponents of the initiatives to cry foul, arguing it’s difficult to see exactly what money is being spent on which initiative. LGW argues it has been plenty transparent, and dismisses the case as all technicalities.
The PDC’s power to levy fines is relatively limited, although it can refer cases to the attorney general’s office, which can seek harsher penalties. The short-term impact here is optical: The case provides another talking point for opponents of Let’s Go Washington measures.
The ballot measures in question are Initiative 2117 to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, Initiative 2109 to repeal the capital gains tax, Initiative 2124 to allow more people to opt out of the state’s long-term care insurance program and the payroll tax that pays for it, and Initiative 2066, which would roll back various attempts to limit the use of natural gas. Recent polling paints a bleak picture for all but I-2066.
The Democratic-led Legislature approved three of the conservative measures introduced by LGW earlier this year in part to keep these popular measures off the ballot. (Paul Queary)
Footnotes:
- In 2019-20, about 50% of the state operating budget, which came out at roughly $13.9 billion, was spent on K-12 education costs, according to a presentation by OSPI. This number has fallen gradually, recently hitting 43% of the state operating budget in 2024-25, despite the baseline cost of educating students increasing due to inflation and other factors.
- The most expensive component of the “basic education” formula the state pays for is teacher salaries, but special education, student transportation, materials, supplies, and operating costs (MSOC) are also considered part of basic education that the state is responsible to pay in full.
- State dollars for public schools goes well beyond the $3 billion
- Early iterations of the learning assistance program were focused on academic achievement, but in 2017-18 the LAP program was expanded to include more money for high poverty school districts. A school district is considered high poverty if, over a three-year average, more than 50% of enrolled students are eligible for a free or reduced lunch, per the LAP guide.
These articles first appeared in the authors’ political website, The Washington Observer.
