Monday, August 22, 2016

Hey, speaking of school finance lawsuits

Washington state's legislature owes $36.5 million in fines, as it's been a year, and they haven't fixed the state funding of education.
Interesting to note what the court said the state couldn't use in funding education:
The McCleary opinion reminded the legislature of a rule in Washington law that school funding must be drawn from “dependable and regular tax sources.” The Supreme Court has said that these sources can’t be local property taxes.
Why is that? In the words of the opinion, Districts with high property values are able to raise more levy dollars than districts with low property values, thus affecting the equity of a statewide system. Conversely, property-poor districts, even if they maximize their local levy capacity, will often fall short of funding a constitutionally adequate education. All local-level funding… suffers from this same infirmity....

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