School Board
Directs District
To File “Fair School Funding” Lawsuit
Federal Way Public Schools’ Board of Education voted unanimously at the October 24, 2006 board meeting to pursue a lawsuit (703K PDF) regarding inequitable school funding against the State of Washington. Currently there are substantial differences in state funding from one school district to the next. Resolution #2006-28 authorizes the filing of a legal complaint challenging the constitutionality of the inequitable funding formulas for teaching, administrative and classified staff.
Federal Way students, parents and taxpayers are represented in the lawsuit by individual board members, and representatives for each funding formula component are named as co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit, as well. Representing the district’s teachers is Shannon Rasmussen, President of the Federal Way Education Association. Administrative staff members are represented by Cindy Black, Principal of Nautilus Elementary and President of the Federal Way Principals Association. Classified staff members are represented by Ginger Cornwell, ParaEducator at Valhalla Elementary and Vice President of the Public School Employees Association.
“There is no rational basis for the differences in funding of school districts,” Superintendent Thomas R. Murphy noted. “The State Legislature has simply taken the school funding inequities declared unconstitutional in 1977 and frozen them in place without any meaningful or substantial change for twenty years."
Federal Way Public Schools is the 7th largest school district in Washington, yet it ranks 263rd out of the 296 districts in dollars-per-student funding. If Federal Way had been funded at the same rate as the best-funded districts in the 2006-07 school year, the district estimates it could have received $11.5 million more in state and local funding than it will actually receive this year. “Equitable funding is ethically, morally and legally the right thing to do,” Superintendent Murphy emphasized.
The district has made $14 million worth of budget cuts since the 2002-2003 school year, resulting in dramatic reductions in personnel and programs to compensate for inequitable funding.
“The question is not necessarily whether funding is adequate across the board, but whether the funds allocated by the Legislature for education are fairly disbursed. Our system of funding is not conducive to creating a ‘general and uniform system of public schools’; it has created a system where some school districts are more equal than others,” Board Member David Larson noted in a recent editorial in the Seattle Times.
“We are not asking for more than any other district gets, we are only asking for fair and equitable funding that meets Washington’s constitutional requirement to “provide for a general and uniform system of public schools,” Director Larson added.