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On Wednesday, legislative committees continued to
review the state’s current budget situation and
continued discussions of Gov. Christine Gregoire’s 2010
Supplemental Operating Budget and her newly released
“Book II” budget proposal.
This morning, the Senate Early Learning & K-12
Education Committee held a work session to: review the
original 2009-11 K-12 budget; discuss the 2010 budget
outlook; and review the governor’s proposed education
(both early learning and K-12) budgets. Committee staff
also updated Committee members on progress on Basic
Education finance reform, as directed by ESHB 2261,
adopted last session. The timeline for implementation
and initial steps to implementation were discussed.
Briefly noted was the work of the
Funding
Formula Technical Working Group and the Quality
Education Council (just today, they
QEC’s final initial report was released).
This afternoon, the House Ways & Means Committee held
a work session on the governor’s Book II budget. Similar
to a presentation she provided yesterday in the Senate
Ways & Means Committee, Gov. Gregoire explained the
basics of her new budget proposal. She reminded
Committee members that her second budget plan is a
combination of new revenues ($780 million) and budget
reductions ($1.0 billion) and will still be painful in
some respects; however, her Book II budget will restore
cuts in some vital programs. For education, the proposal
includes the following “buy-backs”:
- Local Effort Assistance (LEA) – Gregoire
proposes $165 million to restore the LEA program and
expand the program to temporarily provide additional
assistance to the most “property poor” school
districts. This temporary additional assistance
would last as long as her proposed temporary
increase in the local levy lid.
- All-day Kindergarten, Gifted Education and
Reading Corps – $42 million would be used to:
restore funding for schools with the highest poverty
levels to continue state-funded all-day kindergarten
programs; restore funding for 23,000 students who
participate in Gifted Education programs across the
state; and restore funding for the Reading Corp
program, providing tutors and other specialists
struggling to read.
- Early Learning – Gregoire requests $10.5
million to restore funding of the Early Childhood
Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) for 3-year
olds.
- Career and Technical Education – $1.94
million is requested to restore the funding for the
middle school career and technical education
program.
A few Committee members questioned the governor about
her plans regarding school levies. One member asked
about her desire to increase the local school district
levy lid. In response, Gregoire said that funds at the
state level are limited and “if we can’t help you, we
need to ask how schools (and other local governments)
can help themselves.” A second question came
regarding the linkage of the restoration (and expansion)
of LEA and a proposed increase in the levy lid. In her
response, Gregoire clearly described her desire to
maintain LEA, coupled with an increase in school
districts’ levy lids. She also mentioned that she
continues to want to address the levy “rollback” issue
that failed to be resolved last year.
Also this afternoon, the House Capital Budget
Committee held a public hearing on
HB 2561, funding energy retrofits in public
facilities, including school districts. Sponsored by
Rep. Hans Dunshee, Chair of the Committee, HB 2561 is a
scaled-back version of his bill from last year that
would have provided $3 billion in bonds to school
districts and other education institutions to modernize
facilities to address safety and health needs, emergency
needs and to capture energy savings. The size of last
year’s bill caused State Treasurer Jim McIntire to
oppose the plan because of its potential negative impact
on the state’s bond rating. This new bill would provide
about $860 million in general obligation bonds
(following approval of a statewide ballot issue) for the
purpose of creating jobs by constructing capital
improvements that lead to energy-related cost savings in
public schools, state colleges and universities, along
with other public facilities. Positively, the bill would
grow the state’s economy by the creation of jobs and
provide school districts (and others) with funds for
capital improvements for energy costs savings.
Unfortunately, the funding would be awarded in
competitive grants, meaning some school districts would
be left out; last year’s plan would have provided a
per-student allocation to all school districts, with a
minimum amount being provided to small school districts.
Although we have concerns about HB 2561, we supported
the bill today because the motivation behind the bill is
positive and it moves in the right direction. As this
bill moves forward, we’ll continue to work with
legislators to remind them about those districts that
may be left behind.
Finally, this evening the House Education
Appropriations Committee will hold a work session on
education portions of the governor’s 2010 Supplemental
Operating Budget. Presumably, the presentation will be
very similar to the presentations already made today and
yesterday; however, we will report on any additional
information in tomorrow’s Update.
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