SERIES | K-12 Education Finance 101: A People’s Guide

by Oliver Miska and Jeff Paul

If you are reading this article about school-funding policy because you are mad about school closures, you are moving toward becoming an advocate for fully and equitably funding schools. 

In order to understand why you should sign onto The People’s Big 5 Legislative Priorities to Fully Fund our Schools Campaign, it is important to do a deep dive into the root causes of the fiscal crisis Washington State K–12 schools face this year.

Our goal is to provide a “People’s Guide” as a companion to the state’s “Citizen’s Guide to Washington State K-12 Finance,” a useful, but somewhat intimidating, guide produced by the legislature’s staff, based on an even more intimidating report by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

K–12 school finance is dependent on two key terms: revenue and allocation. Revenue is money collected through taxes, some of which goes toward the education budget, which is then spent, or allocated, by local school districts to run our schools and pay our educators.

Currently, we have a local and state budget crisis because the revenue that’s collected doesn’t meet spending needs. It doesn’t help that federal dollars on education risk being further cut. Equity becomes a second priority to addressing deficits.

We cannot talk about equitable allocation of funds if the pie we’re slicing up doesn’t represent the true wealth of our great state. Our current revenue system (tax code) depends on state and local property taxes and sales taxes, resulting in inequitable funding among school districts depending on whether they have high or low property values and income levels. The pie for education spending isn’t funded by the wealthy, but the working class.

Many education advocates fighting for school funding want to again increase property taxes locally — what they call a “levy lift.” Unfortunately, while this benefits school districts like Seattle and Mercer Island, it burdens low-income residents with higher taxes and results in further inequity across the state. Many, including University of Washington (UW) education professor David Knight, point to changes the legislature made in 2017–2018, in what is called the “McCleary Fix,” as a failed effort to make our school funding system more equitable. 

As we explained in an earlier Back to School Series piece, there is a program designed to redistribute funds to districts with low property values that lack local revenue: Local Effort Assistance (LEA). LEA spending only makes up about 3%–4% of our total education spending and doesn’t achieve equality among school districts, let alone equity, according to Knight. Calls for increasing LEA and Learning Assistance Program (LAP) are central to the Big 5, but these are seen as Band-Aids for a broken system.

Proposing a New Model

The other part of the problem is allocation. The allocation model our state uses, called the prototypical model, does not meet our local or student needs. Turns out that districts’ costs do not match up with allocations in the prototypical model, and that is one reason we have a statewide budget shortfall for education this year.

The prototypical model funds districts based on the three standardized school sizes: high schools (600 students), middle schools (442 students), and elementary schools (400 students). To try to remedy the inadequate prototypical model, the state Legislature has implemented regionalization factors that increase support for districts with higher costs. When a district breaks from the prototypical model in terms of school size, it usually starts to cost more money.

Shaun Scott, candidate for state representative in the 43rd Legislative District (Seattle’s own district), has signed onto the Big 5 and published an op-ed unearthing the problematic history of not only our prototypical model, but also the roots of settler colonialism in our education system. 

The question now is which legislators will join Scott, Knight, and a growing number of rank-and-file educators across the state in signing the Big 5 Pledge. 

The allocation formula can only be equitable if it comes from equitable revenue. This means we must pass progressive revenue, taxing the rich, so that the pie we spend from represents the great wealth of Washingtonians.

Regressive Revenue

Washington’s tax code, which dictates how our revenue is generated, is decided by the state Legislature and framed by our state constitution. Our system regressively draws on sales and property taxes, and research shows this tax code has a disproportionate impact on the poor and working class (Figures 1 and 2 below). This was decided by five men on the State Supreme Court in 1933.

Our local and state taxes make up 85% of our school funding. As Figures. 3 and 4 below show, local taxes come directly from property tax levies, while state taxes come from a combination of property taxes and business taxes, with the majority coming from sales tax. The federal funds, which make up 10% of the budget, are mostly directed toward costs for Title I, a federal program that assists schools in supporting students from low-income households; special education; and unreliable emergency funds like COVID relief dollars.

Some wrongly focus on measuring equity in K–12 spending by using the percent of our budget, aiming for 50% of our state’s budget (we are currently at 43%). These measurements fail to recognize cost fluctuation between states and inappropriately pit education against other important social services.

Instead we suggest considering Washington’s national ranking for our K–12 education spending as a percent of state income (GDP). According to Knight, Washington spends about 3% of GDP on education, while the national average is closer to 4%. While some advocates are calling for $2 billion more in education funding, an extra 1% of our state GDP would mean a much needed $20 billion more for K–12 per biennium.

OSPI Superintendent Chris Reykdal released his plan for the legislature this week asking for a $3 billion yearly increase for our state’s K–12 budget. Getting to 4% is one goalpost for equity in the coming years, but that would take $10 billion more funds for K–12 education annually. To get there, we will need new progressive revenue.

There is genuine merit to blaming the federal government, since they have yet to fully fund special education as directed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975. But it is the State’s paramount duty to amply fund our schools, so advocacy efforts have coalesced in Olympia.

Since the 1920s, Washingtonians have fought for a progressive income tax at the state level, but, with little luck, advocates have focused on advocating for increases to local levies for their own schools. The reluctance of the state Legislature to pass progressive revenue pits local districts against one another, as this UW report shows.

Reversing Systemic Inequities and ‘Equity’ Half-Measures

The People’s Big 5 Priorities calls for new progressive revenue policies now. One proposal includes replacing regressive taxes, like sales and property taxes, with a progressive income tax, a wealth tax, expanded capital gains taxes, or, more realistically, a combination of multiple policies. But legislators and progressive advocates are waiting to see the results of several billionaire-backed November ballot initiatives before making any announcements on new legislation.

Our revenue system has two-fold inequity: (1) Revenue sources cause disproportionate burden on the poor and working class; and (2) local taxes raise less money for higher-poverty, lower-home-value districts.

The Big 5 would help flatten this regressive curve seen in both graphs in Figure 5 below, by shifting revenue to progressive sources and away from regressive sales and property tax. Expanding programs like LEA and LAP would be the first step, with larger reforms to the prototypical model to come, with a solution informed by experts like Knight, but also districts, students, and labor unions.

If you want to join the 100-plus year people’s fight to tax the rich in Washington and call on our legislators to put progressive language into action, join the People’s Big 5 Campaign to fully fund our schools by taking three easy steps:

1. Sign the Pledge at bit.ly/FullyFundWASchools

2. Email Your Legislators through Action Network.

3. Learn more about the advocacy efforts on our new website at www.ThePeoplesBig5.com

Another education-funding article will come out in October, with a focus on local issues in the Seattle School District and failure of the state’s prototypical model to meet student needs. We encourage you to reach out to us on X @Back2SchoolSEA with questions or feedback.

The South Seattle Emerald is committed to holding space for a variety of viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing perspectives do not negate mutual respect amongst community members.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the contributors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the Emerald or official policies of the Emerald.

Oliver Treanor Miska, 33, is a queer Seattleite, educator, community organizer, and lobbyist for educational justice policy in Washington State. Moving out of full-time classroom teaching after six years, they substitute teach in SPS and are founding director of Solidarity Policy and Public Affairs, a political consulting firm. As a community organizer, Oliver has held leadership roles within Seattle Democratic Socialist of America and Washington Ethnic Studies Now, where they co-lead a statewide legislative coalition. Oliver is also a member of SCORE, the Seattle Caucus of Rank and File Educators of Seattle Education Association (SEA), our educators union. They work to organize youth, families, educators, and community organizations to pass progressive revenue to fully fund our schools statewide. To contact them, email: solidaritypolicywa@gmail.com

Jeff Paul, 31, is a special education paraprofessional who has been serving students in Seattle Public Schools for six years. They are a member of the Seattle Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators, a progressive caucus within the Seattle Education Association. Jeff is actively involved in Seattle’s growing labor movement, serving as a member-at-large on the SEA Paraprofessional Board, as well as a delegate from SEA to the MLK Labor Council. They are a trustee on the executive board of the Young Emerging Labor Leaders and a founding board member of House Our Neighbors, a housing advocacy organization in Seattle that fights for social housing, climate action and connected communities.