Legislative Update | Feb. 19-23, 2024

February 23, 2024

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Budgets are Released and There’s No Looking Back Now

Drew_LU_2.23.24 — *Pictured above: Drew Thompson from Colorado State University competes in high jump.*

A collective “ugh” was felt by the education community this week at the Capitol as the House and Senate released their supplemental budgets. Education advocates remain concerned by inadequate funding and we are using several talking points from OSPI to help explain why districts are facing shortages. Here are a few of them:

Transition from ESSER

On average, ESSER funds made up just 3-5% of a school district’s budget. These funds bought learning devices, connectivity, PPE, and kept our bus drivers and teachers employed during the pandemic to continue serving students as we adjusted to a new, remote learning environment.
When you look at the net impact of ESSER funds, these temporary dollars only slightly offset the permanent state funds that our schools lost due to changes in student enrollment levels during the pandemic.

Overall K-12 Funding/Enrollment decline

With ESSER going away, fewer permanent funds mean that some of our districts are making really difficult decisions about their budgets. This in itself is not new, because districts are used to engaging in budget reductions as enrollment fluctuates.
However, due to the increasing inflation over the past few years, we are seeing worrisome trends in funding for our state’s paramount duty: our public schools.
We can see that the share of the state’s budget that the legislature invests in schools has been in a downward trend since 2019, declining from 51% of the budget to now just 43%.
We are grateful for the legislature’s investments in things like special education, counselors, nurses, and other support staff, however, while the actual dollar amounts provided by the legislature have increased, the buying power of those dollars has actually been decreasing since the 2019-20 school year.
If you look at total K-12 spending (local and state) funding per student (taking into account all of the increased investments, the lower enrollment, and adjusted for inflation) we are actually investing $1,000 less per pupil than we were 5 years ago. This is equivalent to almost $1B in state resources. Yet, our systems are expected to provide the same, if not better, level of programming.

But, there’s no looking back. We have to press on and continue our advocacy efforts to push for adequate funding that meets our state’s “paramount duty” to fund public schools.

The Washington Research Council wrote a good overview comparing the House and Senate supplemental budgets that were released earlier in the week. Besides increases in maintenance level spending (for COLAs and some additional increases to the prototypical model for nurses, counselors, and social workers), here is a look at the major items of new spending from both sides.

House Budget

Special Education Enhancements ($32.3 million NGF-O 2023-25; $32.3 million Total 2023- 25; $114.9 million 4-year NGF-O) Funding is provided for an increase to the funded enrollment limit for students eligible for special education from 15 percent to 17.25 percent, as required in HB 2180. Additionally, funding is provided for cohorts of special education teacher residents to participate in training, coursework, and classroom co-teaching with mentor teachers.

Maintenance, Supplies, and Operating Costs ($43.4 million NGF-O 2023-25; $43.4 million Total 2023-25; $94.7 million 4-year NGF-O) Per pupil rates for maintenance, supplies, and operating costs (MSOCs) are increased by $21 beginning in the current 2023-24 school year, as required under HB 2494. The categories of MSOCs increased are utilities and insurance, instructional professional development, and security and central office.

Community Eligibility Provision ($41.2 million NGF-O 2023-25; $41.2 million Total 2023- 25; $90.4 million 4-year NGF-O) Funding is provided for additional reimbursements to schools participating in the Community Eligibility Provisions program for school meals not reimbursed at the federal free meal rate.

Transportation Actuals for 2023-24 ($76.9 million NGF-O 2023-25; $76.9 million Total 2023-25; $165.8 million 4-year NGF-O) Appropriations are increased to reflect updated 2023-24 school year transportation allocations calculated by OSPI in February of this year, which are above the estimated amounts assumed through January.

Senate Budget

Transportation Actuals – $76.9 million NGF-O (2023-25); $88.9 million NGF-O (2025-27) Funding is provided to account for OSPI allocation of transportation funding to school districts.

K-12 Staffing – $49.6 million NGF-O (2023-25); $129.8 million NGF-O (2025-27) Funding is provided to modify the prototypical school staffing model and to implement SB 5882 (prototypical school staffing) which increases staff allocations for paraeducators, office supports, and non instructional aides.

CEP Expansion – $45 million NGF-O (2023-25); $45 million NGF-O (2025-27) Funding is provided to reimburse additional school districts required to participate in the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) pursuant to Chapter 7, Laws of 2022 (SHB 1878). The funding will support schools not eligible for the full federal reimbursement rate.

Transportation – $23.1 million NGF-O (2023-25); $25.6 million NGF-O (2025-27) Funding is provided for adequate and predictable student transportation as proposed in SB 5873. For McKinney-Vento homeless students, $400 per student is provided to 32,086 students. Funding is provided in the amount of $170,000 for OSPI to collect student expenditure data, $6 million is provided to the OSPI for supplemental transportation allocations, and $4 million is provided to OSPI to allow contract bus drivers and related staff to opt-in to benefits. Funding is provided to OSPI in the amount of $130,000 to implement SB 6031.

Special Education – $13.5 million NGF-O (2025-27); $36 million NGF-O (2025-27) Funding is provided to increase the 15 percent enrollment limit on state special education funding to 15.6 percent.

You can see that the biggest difference between the two budgets is that the House is prioritizing increased funding for MSOC and the Senate is prioritizing funding for increasing the prototypical funding model for paraeducators.

The House partly honored our request for additional funding for the principal intern grant program and added $223,000 to the current amount of $477,000. The Senate did not add additional funds for the grant. This was well short of the $1 million we requested be added. Neither side added funding to support current building principals so we continue to impress upon the legislature the critical nature of this request.

All of these differences will have to be resolved through budget negotiations in the next two weeks.