On March 15, Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law legislation that will keep the local school levy lid at 28 percent until 2019.
The new law will save an estimated $358 million for districts across the state. Renton alone could have lost nearly $11 million and up to 150 teachers had the bill failed to pass.
“As a superintendent, I am appreciative that the Legislature has listened to our pleas regarding the urgency of delaying the so-called ‘levy cliff,’” Renton School District Interim Superintendent Art Jarvis wrote in an email. “It has been our position that once our legislators fully understood the significance of the timing, that they would in fact do what was necessary to avoid harm to the districts.”
The House passed SB 5023 with 87 in support and 10 opposed after the Senate approved the bill on March 8 with 48 in support and one opposed. This law freezes the current levy lid at 28 percent until 2019; the lid was scheduled to drop to 24 percent in 2018.
A levy cliff can occur when the levy lid, the amount that local school districts can raise through voter-approved special operating and maintenance levies, is lowered without additional funding coming from the state. Lowering the levy lid by 4 percent without alternative sources of funding could result in a levy cliff, which may lead to program cuts, teacher dismissals and students without access to resources.
While the law takes effect on July 23, Renton school board President Todd Franceschina said he still has concerns.
“My concern with SB 5023 is it establishes a process for school districts to ensure local maintenance and operation levies are used for enrichment only and not basic education,” he wrote in an email. “If this is the case then state government will need to fully fund basic education, which it is not doing at this time.”
Inslee said passing the bill won’t remove the Legislature’s motivation to put forth a plan to fund basic education as mandated by the Washington Supreme Court in the McCleary decision.
“It clears the way for legislators to focus on the larger task at hand — fully funding education this year,” he said in a press release.
In 2012, the Court determined that the state wasn’t fulfilling its constitutional duty to fund basic education and ordered the Legislature to implement a funding plan.
Currently most districts raise up to 28 percent of their operating revenue through voter-approved property tax levies. A levy base is calculated by adding state and federal funding. Voter-approved tax levies are intended to fund programs and expenditures outside of basic education, but districts sometimes use these funds to pay for basic education programs and functions when state dollars aren’t sufficient.
