EDMONDS, Wash. — Educators and school boards in multiple western Washington school districts are collaborating to raise awareness about the need for more K-12 funding, starting with a town hall to stress several key priorities.
"Districts are all suffering from not having enough money and every year we have to cut more and more and more; cutting programs, raising class sizes, cutting staff," said Edmonds School District Board of Directors President Nancy Katims. "We're not meeting kids' needs where we need to and we need to do more than meeting the bare minimum."
The "Education Funding Crisis Town Hall," a joint effort between advocates for the Edmonds, Northshore and Shoreline school districts, will be held Wednesday, October 23 at 6 p.m. at Edmonds-Woodway High School. Community members attending will have the chance to join breakout groups to share how funding cuts have impacted them.
"The time is now. As I sit down with our school board president and superintendent, there is no meaningful path ahead," Edmonds Education Association president Andi Nofziger-Meadows said. "Last year when we looked at cuts, we made really deep ones. There's nothing left that's not going to have impacts for our students."
Katims and Nofziger-Meadows said there are six key priority areas they hope to stress with legislators:
- Special education: they say current state funding models give a set amount of funding per student with programming needs, but each student is different and requires unique resources.
- Full funding for substitute staff; not just teachers, but paraprofessionals and other necessary educational personnel.
- Costs for utilities and insurance; costs are increasing, but allocations are not keeping up.
- They want money to cover required pay increases for educators with more experience.
- They're asking for funds to keep class sizes at an advisable level.
- Finally, they want to ensure enough funding to cover all required courses for graduation for high school students.
Ultimately, they still hope to see an overhaul of the school funding model, but believe these stopgap measures could give districts a bridge in the meantime.
Nofziger-Meadows and Katims point to a recent report about education funding in Washington state.
"The time is now for the state to step up," Katims said, adding that she knows there are competing priorities, but students need to be educated about issues such as climate change if we want to solve them. "It's a failure of education to not be able to provide our citizens what they need."
In January, the Edmonds Education Association and District Board of Directors were among a coalition of groups that issued an urgent letter to lawmakers on the same issue.