Who pays for public schools? We do — again, and again

As the state wrangles with the definition of “basic education” and its constitutional obligation to amply fund the public schools, activists concern themselves with the more immediate need to fund school programs left to the local taxpayers.

The corner of Martin Way and Marvin Road is the busiest intersection in Lacey. That’s according to Jon Halvorson, who would know such things.

There was a rally there last Saturday, in support of the North Thurston School District’s levy. Halvorson, a former Lacey mayor and city council member, is the co-chair of North Thurston Citizens for Schools, the group running the pro-levy campaign.

Raj Manhas and Jon Halvorson

The mood among the couple of hundred sign-waving levy supporters was upbeat – festive, even – which is to be expected at a gathering of like-minded people. And most seemed optimistic about the levy’s chances, but cautiously so.

School levies aren’t slam-dunk propositions in North Thurston. One failed in its first go-round a couple of years ago, but won on its second try. There were back-to-back failures in 1994. The fate of this year’s levy, to help fund maintenance and operations for the following two years, will be decided in the Feb. 9 election.

Levy supporters say the stakes are higher than ever, what with so much of what we now expect from the public schools being dependent on local levy funding.

“I got skin in this game,” Halvorson said. “I got two granddaughters at North Thurston High School. I want the schools to have choir, theater.

“Those things are on the chopping block if this fails.”

Ruth Weigelt has some skin in this game as well. The now retired Weigelt got divorced eons ago and raised her three kids, as a single mother, in the North Thurston District. Now she has a grandkid in the local schools.

Ruth Weigelt

Weigelt has a long history of volunteering. For years she has been the driving force behind a community festival, and she’s served on the board of the local YMCA for more than three decades. That history is part of the reason she was asked to co-chair this year’s school levy effort, Halvorson said.

Among the challenges the all-volunteer campaign faces is impressing upon the voters the degree to which schools depend on local levy funding for the day-in, day-out costs of educating school kids, Weigelt said. As the campaign points out, in the early 1980s, the local levy covered about 8 percent of the district’s budget. Now, it’s about 19 percent.

“I think that’s typical” for school districts across the state, said Nathan Olson, communications manager for the state’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. School districts were even more dependent on local levy funds in the 1970s, he said, back before legislation, prompted by a lawsuit, brought those percentages down into the single digits.

“Before the passage of a major, major bill, levies were covering 25, 30 percent of operating costs,” Olson said. Those percentages had been creeping upwards slightly for some time, he added, but “in the last four, five, six years, it has climbed quite a bit. Now it’s in the 20s statewide.”

So now, the challenge of meeting those operating costs is on the local taxpayers.

Yet another challenge, Weigelt said, is to get the parents of school kids to actually vote.

“The thing that hit me square in the face is that only 50 percent of our parents are registered to vote,” she said. So, she added, the effort has to begin early, many months ahead of the election, so that those likely to vote in favor of the levy get themselves legally entitled to do so.

Lacey is also home to a large retirement community, Weigelt noted. Older people can be relied upon to cast their ballots, so the campaign’s challenge is to get them to vote in the affirmative.

Running campaigns is costly, even in a penny-pinching, all-volunteer effort. (Weigelt pointed out that her campaign committee partnered with their counterparts in the nearby districts of Olympia and Tumwater to jointly advertise on buses and in print media.)

And Halvorson’s political experience has come in handy.

“This is my 13th month on this campaign,” he said. “I have the time and the energy, and I have some experience running campaigns.”

Add to the cost of running a campaign the public expenditure in running elections, and multiply by the nearly 300 public school districts in the state, and you might be left to wonder if there’s a better way.

People are working on that, including the League of Education Voters, said Gretchen Maliska, who co-chaired the North Thurston levy campaign a couple of years ago and still serves on the citizen group’s board. She’s raising five kids, a couple of whom are currently in the North Thurston schools, and a couple of others will be before long.

“They’re trying to get the state to recognize that you can’t mandate basic education without funding it,” Maliska said.

But where’s the money coming from?

Much of state funding is dependent on sales taxes, which fall off during economic downturns and leave program administrators looking where to cut.

Maliska dares utter the words that strike terror in the hearts of many of this state’s elected officials.

“An income tax would help,” she said. “But that’s a whole other battle.”

Halvorson floated an idea that may be more politically feasible.

“My personal preference would be to let the voters decide if they want a permanent levy, like we have for Medic 1,” he said. “It would be the same rate every year. It would be stable, predictable.”

And, he acknowledges, it might be a tough sell.

“Another way would be to have the levy last longer, every eight years,” he added.

His co-chair essentially concurs.

“You’re always having to go back and educate the public on why they need a levy,” Weigelt said. “And I’m sure they get frustrated with it as well.”

But those are matters for another day, the North Thurston volunteers say.

“When this is over, I plan to talk with (state Senator) Karen Fraser, to see what she thinks we should do,” Weigelt said. “My focus right now is seeing to it our community is well educated and get this levy passed.”

Halvorson makes the case more bluntly.

“If this goes down, it will be crushing,” he said.