Nshrubs

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

@autumn @ai6yr We'd LOVE to have more kids walking & biking up here, but Seattle & much of Western Washington never bothered with sidewalks beyond a certain point. Many of our roads from schools out to neighborhoods were once old logging roads - windy, hilly, no shoulder, flat out dangerous for kids to walk or bike on. ☹️

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

Among the things they fucked up? Elimination of the staff salary mix, which reimbursed districts for the staff they HAD, replacing it with a flat rate. This penalizes districts with more experienced staff & incentivizes only hiring new, inexperienced (& cheap) teachers. (This definitely had WA GOP fingerprints ALL over it.)

Your Salary and Why “Staff Mix” Matters
https://storiesfromschool.org/your-salary-and-why-staff-mix-matters/

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

There's also the little issue of the sneaky levy "swipe" which doubled property taxes in King & Snohomish counties & sent local levy money to fund rural school districts by way of the state budget, all engineered by a GOP legislator Chad Magendanz & DINO Ross Hunter.

https://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/restore-school-funding/broken-promises-shell-games-and-poison-pills

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

#waleg also limited our ability to use local levy money with the cap of $2.50 per $1,000 assessed property value that they forced on us.

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

#waleg also cut our LEA funds, so districts with lower property values are receiving less equalizing funding from the state.

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

Then there's the whole "regionalization factor" bullshit that means one district's teachers get extra money & the district RIGHT NEXT TO IT does not. The intent was good, but #waleg fucked it up SO badly.
https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicupload/eclips/2018%2002%2002%20We%20re%20screwed%20Some%20school%20districts%20feel%20like%20losers%20in%20new%20school%20funding%20scheme.pdf

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

Neither the state NOR the feds have EVER fully funded IDEA/Special Ed as promised. WA State has had a cap on what it will pay for Special Ed, the rest used to come out of our local levies, which #waleg has now restricted our collection of. The ~$25M deficit my district has this year is DIRECTLY tied to our SPED costs.

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

What this all means for kids is that fewer of their needs will be met, class sizes will get larger, teachers will be more stressed & under WAY more pressure, parents will get pissed, & the right wingers will increase their drumbeat for "school choice" aka school #vouchers claiming that public schools are failing. And in #waleg, the Democrats are just as much to blame for this as the GOP. None of them have made ANY attempt to rectify what they screwed up.

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

Designed to Fail: The Legislature’s McCleary solution has collapsed
http://paramountduty.org/designed-to-fail-the-legislatures-mccleary-solution-has-collapsed/

Nshrubs, 6 days ago

@ai6yr It's a nightmare. 5 teachers from my school are being laid off, about 67 teachers in my district, plus support staff & admins. We have a teacher shortage yet we're laying teachers off STATEWIDE in this budget cliff for schools here that was predicted back in 2018 right after the legislature unleashed their "fixes".