How do you get a mandate for major new funding enacted in the middle of one of the worst financial crises ever? That’s one of the questions that arises this morning, after the Legislature late last night passed a bill that would overhaul the state’s system for funding education.”Persistence,” says Kim Howard, government relations director for the state PTA, one of several education groups that lobbied aggressively for House Bill 2261, the success of which followed months of political skirmishing. That and leaving many of the details–including precisely what is to be funded and from where the money will come–for later.What remains in the bill is a semi-sketched out redefinition of “basic education”–which the state is obligated to fund by virtue of its constitution. “That was the key to this whole reform effort,” says Sen. Fred Jarrett (D-Mercer Island), one of the prime movers behind the legislation (and a recently announced candidate for King County Executive).

At its most specific, the bill spells out that basic education will include all-day kindergarten and six periods a day in high school. Currently, the state funds only half-day kindergarten and a 5-period high school day. Howard says the bill’s high school provision is “huge” because students need more credits to get accepted into most colleges. Other details will be left to various work groups, committees and state boards. For instance, the bill asks a work group to create “prototype” school models that would address issues such as ideal class sizes and staffing, which would then be included in the definition of basic education. Another work group will look at how to pay for all this by the year 2018, by which time the new system is supposed to be phased in. Jarrett says much of the money will undoubtedly come from the general fund. “We spend 42 percent of the general fund budget on K-12 education whereas around the county that number is closer to 50,” he asserts. But he also says that a new tax may be necessary. “Either the Legislature will enact a tax and Tim Eyeman will put it on the ballot as a referendum, or the Legislature will start off with a referendum,” Jarrett predicts. Mary Lindquist, president of the Washington Education Association, nevertheless assails the bill as an “empty promise with no revenue attached.” The teachers union vehemently opposed it, not only for its lack of an identifiable funding stream but also its call to redesign teacher pay, certification and evaluation. The bill doesn’t spell out those details out either, but Lindquist says she can see where all this is heading from previous, failed bills that would, for example, have based certification in part on classroom evaluations. In spite of WEA’s position, Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe (D-Bothell) and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn–both closely allied with labor–came out for HB 2261. McAuliffe says legislators tried to address WEA’s concerns by stipulating in the bill that teachers collaborate on some of these changes. “We still couldn’t get them on board,” she says.