Court fines total $36M in McCleary school-funding case. But will they ever be paid?
Washington spends more than $10 billion every year on its public schools. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court found in 2012 that our state has long failed to cover the actual cost of K-12 education, and demanded an improvement.
To crack the whip on generally sluggish progress toward that goal, last year the court ruled Washington would rack up fines of $100,000-per-day until lawmakers presented a detailed plan for covering the cost of a “basic” education, as defined by the Legislature itself. To date, those fines total $36 million. So where is this money?
The short answer: in the ether, on an Excel spreadsheet.
The fine was not included in Washington’s 2015-17 operating budget that passed last year. Nor did it show up in the supplemental budget approved in March. In the minds of some legislators, it isn’t even real.
Read more: http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/where-are-the-fines-ordered-in-mccleary-school-funding-case/
