Reports on the NEWS Case

The teachers at Cathcart Elementary School asked parents to buy new globes and maps for their classrooms because the old ones still showed the U.S.S.R. They also requested reading books and math manipulatives – cubes, puzzles and other tools for teaching math. When janitorial service was reduced for cost reasons, the educators even asked for vacuum cleaners to tidy their classrooms themselves.

The libraries in the Yakima School District are aging, with most of the books at least 20 years old. Principals "scrounge" for computers that also are growing outdated. A cafeteria seats 200 children in an elementary school with more than 500 students. And building maintenance? "I'd like to tell you we have a maintenance schedule, but we don't," former Yakima Superintendent Ben Soria testified Tuesday in the trial over education funding. "There's no resources to have a schedule."

Although funding for K-12 education in Washington has long been inequitable, the Legislature has lacked the "political will" over the years to do something meaningful about it, former State Treasurer Dan Grimm said Monday as the trial over education funding entered its third week.

Teachers who earn significantly less than comparable educators in neighboring school districts. Unpredictable prices for bus fuel. Rising health and liability insurance costs. An over-reliance on local levies. Less buying power. And expectations of world-class schools without the funding to get there. Many of the shortcomings in Washington's system of school finance were evident Thursday as the trial over education funding ended its second week.

State Rep. Skip Priest testified for all but 15 minutes on Day 6 of the trial over education funding, giving detailed answers to questions posed Wednesday by attorneys from the Network for Excellence in Washington Schools and from the State. But he never backed down from a definitive position: the failure to fully fund K-12 education is the “Achilles heel” in every step forward the State has taken for decades in education reform.

The ongoing debate over education finance in Washington often focuses on abstract numbers, percentages and dollar figures, overshadowing the harsh consequences of inadequate funding. "It's easy to talk about numbers. It's easy to talk about statistics.

Judith Billings remembered the euphoria felt by educators in 1978 when the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the State had failed to comply with its constitutional duty to amply provide for the education of all children. "We were cheering," said Billings, then a teacher in the Puyallup School District, and later the state Superintendent of Public Instruction. "We finally had the hammer. We were going to get funding.