Public School Employees Legislative Blog

Snohomish schools may cut on-campus police officers.

According to the Everett Herald newspaper, budget cuts have forced the Edmonds School District to consider dropping its school resource officer program, which would save $200,000 in next year's budget. It is among $6.7 million in budget reductions that Superintendent Nick Brossoit is proposing to the school board.

The Lakewood School District north of Marysville also is considering eliminating its school resource officer to save money. It's looking for ways to cut $813,000.

Read the entire news article.

Furlough bill passes House.

Getting the bare minimum yes votes (50) for passage, the House passed its version of the furlough bill. This version doesn't change the picture much regarding the impact of the furlough bill on PSE higher education members. That's because we won't know how many cuts will result from this bill until the operating budget is adopted. And that budget is under wraps while the revenue negotiations continue.

The one thing that is clear to me is that the extent of the furlough bill cuts will be balanced with insurance cuts. Another way of saying this is that we can expect that the two issues are joined together and that once the House and Senate agree to how much they plan to cut in these two areas, they will either increase or decrease one or the other to achieve the total.

One week to go in special session - little sense of urgency.

Since my last post, I acquired a new laptop and finally am able to post an update to the blog. So what has happened in the last two weeks??? Not much!

Here is a recap of the slow moving special session.

Governor Signs Education Bills
A week ago, Governor Gregoire returned to her high school alma mater, Auburn High School, to sign four education bills PSE worked on:

PSE's crosswalk safety bill, SSB 6363
the school levy bill, SHB 2893
the education funding reform bill, SHB 2776, and,
the race to the top bill, E2SSB 6696.

House and Senate Unable to Reach Agreement on Revenue Package
So far, they have reached agreement that they will pass additional revenue of $800 million. Of that amount, they agree on the taxes to get $600 million of that amount. The remaining $200 million is hung up by the Senate's wish to have a 0.001% increase to the state sales tax, and the House's complete rejection of any sales tax increase. There are other disagreements over smaller tax increases but it is hard to see that these disagreements will result in them not reaching a final agreement by April 13 (the last day of the special session).

Operating Budget Negotiations Taking Back Seat to Revenue Negotiations
Though there has been some verbal statements from a variety of House and Senate leaders, it appears that they want to tackle the revenue agreement before moving on to the spending agreements. PSE's K 12 priorities for the special session are:

fully fund K - 4 class-size
continue funding of the classified employee ratio enhancement (58.75:1)
continue funding all day kindergarten
fund levy equalization, the enhanced levy equalization from SHB 2893, and the per pupil inflator at 4%.

PSE's higher education priority is to reduce and/or eliminate the impact of the furlough bill and the House and Senate's efforts to have state and higher education employees pay more for insurance benefits.

A HUGE day for Education.

The state of Washington took its biggest step yet yesterday toward fully funding classified jobs and services as Gov. Gregoire signed into law a major reform law that includes a new funding formula and a timeline for including technology, school safety, and paraeducator instruction as part of Basic Education.

Passage of HB 2776 was a major victory for the thousands of classified employees who have repeatedly called for change, and for all PSE members who have paid $1 per month to sustain the Stepping Up for Smarter Safer Schools campaign. The new law sets a clear path toward providing more adequate, stable funding for classified jobs and services, and lessens the reliance on local levies.

Little progress in one week old special session.

Inching along is the best way to describe the progress so far. On Friday, 4 days into the special session, things started to move when the Senate passed its tax package amounting to $800 million. Yesterday, the House passed its tax package of $800 million. Though this looks like they are in agreement, they are not.

The Senate still has a .2% sales tax increase amounting to $200 million. The House, considered the sales tax, and then voted out a tax package without it in it. And with that issue at a stalemate, both bodies adjourned until Monday at 10:00 am.

Once the revenue picture is clear, all eyes will turn to the final Budget negotiations.

Higher Ed cheers as bargaining bill becomes law.

PSE higher education leaders celebrated today (March 18) as Gov. Gregoire signed a state collective bargaining measure into law.

House Bill 1560 allows PSE’s higher ed chapters at Western Washington University and Central Washington University to negotiate separate contracts with their respective institutions.

Partial service credit pension bill signed by governor.

Gov. Gregoire signed HB 1541 into law today, restoring partial service pension credit to a handful of school employees, including South Kitsap secretary Carey Ensign (above, second from right). Ensign has been pushing to correct an oversight in pension benefits since the late 1980's.

Congratulations to Carey for her perseverance!

Special session starts Monday at noon.

When the legislature returns to Olympia on Monday, PSE will be focusing on the following issues:

State and Higher Education Employee Insurance
There is a continuing debate over how much the state and employee's in the state insurance plan will pay for insurance benefits. In an earlier blog, I described the $220 million shortfall in their insurance plan that needs to be filled. The governor and the House are our most helpful allies in limiting the employee costs.

Furlough Bill
Though this bill has been sitting on the sidelines for several weeks, it crops up from time to time because the state is looking for its $50 million in savings. Unfortunately, most of these savings ($40 million) will require some type of employee sacrifice - this will be negotiated between the agency or university and the employee bargaining representatives. We hope it stays on the sidelines!

Classified Employee Ratio
Though we were able to put the 58.75:1 ratio in the basic education act that becomes effective 9-1-11, we still need to make sure it sticks in the final year of the 2009-11 budget. So far, the Governor and the House have it in their budgets.

Revenue / Cuts
In a previous blog entry, I highlighted the differences between how much each would raise in additional revenue, how much they would cut, and how much they would leave in the ending fund balance. We like the Senate's revenue ($890 million), the House's cuts ($605 million), and the House's ending fund balance of $424 million. We'll soon see in the special session how close they get to our preferred amounts.

Last day of session ends on positive note.

The high stakes game of chicken played by the House and Senate education leaders that involved several critical K 12 education issues was interrupted by Governor Gregoire's intervention. Gregoire forced both sides to negotiate a conclusion to the impasse so that her coveted race to the top issue would be resolved. In the final hours, they were able to reach an agreement good enough that both sides being able to declare victory. And who were the winners? K 12 students, families and employees. The agreement they reached far surpassed my expectations, especially considering the wide gulf between the two bodies' positions at the start of the day.

End of Session
Early on in the session, I thought that the last bills that the legislature would consider would be the levy bill (SHB 2893), the Race to the Top (RTTP) bill (E2SSB 6696), and the Quality Education Council (QEC) bill, (SHB 2776). My thinking was that with so many bad things going on with the budget, the legislature would most likely want to end the session on a good note. Nothing is better to end on than doing something good for K 12 education (this is because with 1 million kids going to school, you can't go wrong doing something positive for it). Well, I was wrong. The last bill was an early education bill (which followed the QEC and RTTP bills).

Here's what the impact of each of the bills starting with the one that passed first, earlier yesterday afternoon, the levy bill.

Senate committee passes good levy bill.

Yesterday, the Senate Ways and Means committee approved SHB 2893 without amendment. This measure will not only fund a 2% increase to current levy equalization payments (at a cost of $25 million), it will raise the levy lid 4% (and allow school districts who already have a levy a special opportunity to go back and ask for the additional 4%), and finally, it will allow school districts to consider the "phantom revenue" they would have received from the state for Initiative 728 (class size), Initiative 732 (salary increases), and any reduced K-4 class size funds.

Previous to this vote, there was an effort yesterday to change the way that the 2% additional levy equalization funds would be distributed. This effort was led by Senator Tom and would have created equalization chaos by taking money from some districts (who would be very unhappy) and giving it to other districts (who would be happy). Fortunately, Senator Tom did not try this effort yesterday. Could he bring it up on the Senate floor when they vote on it in the coming days? He could but I don't think he will.