Pay attention, Washington: "What's so stunning about this recession is that poor districts are going to bear the brunt of these cuts because they rely so heavily on state aid and they don't have the capacity to raise their property taxes" https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/05/09/devastated-budgets-and-widening-inequities-how-the.html #WAedu #WAleg

For some context, WA just two years ago settled a landmark school-funding case (McCleary) that found the state violated its constitutional duty to pay for the full cost of a basic education here, leaving school districts to rely on local property taxes to fill in the gap

WA added billions to its K-12 budget, largely through a tax "swap" that lowered and capped local levies while raising a statewide property tax. BUT that made (especially low-income) school districts more reliant on the state for funding which could hurt during an economic crunch

If WA cuts funding for K-12, it seems inevitable that there will be pressure to lift those levy lids — which would have the unintended consequence of increasing inequity between property-poor and affluent school districts. A double-edged sword, as @margueriteroza has put it

An across-the-board cut to the base funding for all school districts (say, 5% as may happen in neighboring ID: https://www.idahoednews.org/news/ybarra-tells-school-leaders-to-brace-for-new-spending-cuts-of-up-to-5-percent/) would also have an outsized impact on poor districts, since they depend more on state funding

There's plenty of questions to be answered: If the state property tax hike paid for all that new money in education, how much will the loss of sales and other taxes hurt schools? Will lawmakers spare their K-12 budget while spreading the pain to higher ed, health care, etc.?

And most interesting to me: If lawmakers offer financial relief by lifting the local levy lids, does that lay the foundation for a "McCleary 2.0" lawsuit? (Between 1980 and 2010, WA slowly let levies overtake the majority of K-12 spending, so this is worth watching for a while)