OLYMPIA — The state House of Representatives has passed a bill that would create a group to produce recommendations for retaining and fully compensating teachers, as required by the Supreme Court’s 2012 McCleary mandate.
The bill passed 64-34 Monday. Both District 24 legislators, Sequim Democrats Steve Tharinger and Kevin Van De Wege, voted in favor of the measure.
No Democrat voted against the measure. The bill passed the House with bipartisan support.
The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration. A companion Senate bill last week failed to gain committee approval.
The McCleary decision found that the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to fully fund basic education.
Since September 2014, the court has held the state in contempt for failing to produce plans to accomplish this task and in August last year issued a $100,000-per-day penalty for failing to comply with its order.
Basic education must be fully funded by 2018.
The Supreme Court includes teacher compensation as a component of basic education and found that local tax levy funds, which the court considers unreliable for sustained financial resources, have paid for parts of teacher compensation that should have been paid by the state.
HB 2366 establishes a task force that, with the help of a consultant, would produce for the next legislative session recommendations to fully fund teacher pay.
The bill also requires action to eliminate school districts’ reliance on local tax levies by the end of the 2017 session.
‘System broken’
“This is acknowledging that the current system is broken, that the current system is unconstitutional,” Rep. Chad Magendanz, R-Issaquah, said on the floor.
“We are affirming our commitment to put an end to that.”
Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg, said the bill’s section about levies would bind legislators in the session next year to a deadline, adding that current legislators have been in the same position because the court based basic education on the 2009 statute that created the model for prototypical schools.
Manweller warned that the court would use HB 2366 against the Legislature.
“We have undermined the legislative authority of this body, which we all care about,” he said during floor debates.
“We have politicized the courts to a degree that has never been seen in Washington state, and we have led ourselves to the worst constitutional crisis since the founding of this republic.
“And now we’re here today to say we’re not going to fix that problem, we’re not going to fix that mistake, we’re going to repeat that mistake.”
House Majority Leader Rep. Pat Sullivan, D-Covington, countered: “The bill we have today puts forward the next promise, the promise that we will fix a broken school compensation system.”
“I wasn’t here, and I don’t believe any of us were here, when the constitution was adopted, but we’re living up to the commitment that was made by our forefathers,” he continued.
Lytton, Sullivan and Magendanz were part of a work group established by Gov. Jay Inslee in September to produce this bill. Five other representatives and senators were part of the group.
Inslee reacted to passage of the House bill Monday, saying, “We still have much work to do for our schoolchildren and their teachers. Today’s vote keeps us moving in the right direction.”
Dorn opposed bill
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn spoke against the House bill during the House Appropriations Committee public hearing last week, saying the bill did not do anything that was not previously studied by other task forces, councils and work groups created by the Legislature.
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This story is part of a series of news reports from the state Legislature provided through a reporting internship sponsored by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation. Contact reporter Izumi Hansen at hansenizumi@gmail.com.