[Olympia, Photo by Jim Camden, The Spokesman-Review, February 21, 2017]

On Tuesday, February 21, Governor Inslee and four school superintendents held a news conference in Olympia asking lawmakers to break a promise they made to voters.  As I wrote here, in 2010 lawmakers voted to increase local school levy rates.  At the time lawmakers and Governor Gregoire stressed the increased taxes would be temporary and would absolutely expire on January 1, 2018.  To underscore their promise, lawmakers included that date in the title of the bill.

Thus school administrators have known about the promised return to normal tax rates for seven years.  Now, many superintendent say they are unprepared and need more time.  With the expiration of the tax approaching, these four school superintendents are acting as if the long-scheduled rate change is a big surprise.

In my research work on education, I notice that school district budgets always go up. Yet some school district administrators tell the public that schools are always short of money.  To get the facts, I checked the budgets of the districts managed by the four superintendents standing with Governor Inslee on Tuesday, as they complained about needing more money.

Here’s what I found:

I also checked the yearly salaries the superintendents receive (for reference, Governor Inslee makes $172,000 a year in salary).

These superintendents say if they do not get more money, they will start firing teachers in their districts.  Their goal, clearly, is to instill fear in parents and teachers. They want to scare children with the threat they are losing a teacher.

The public does not deserve threats and intimidation from their district’s superintendent.  Taxpayers have significantly increased funding to their schools since 2010. Yet, some superintendents say they are unprepared. They say they want to punish teachers and students because they have mis-managed their budgets over the last seven years.

If school managers must resort to scaring the public to manage their generous budgets, then maybe these managers need to be replaced.

Governor Inslee approves the use of threats by school managers to cover up their budget mistakes and demand more money from the public.

Unfortunately, this press conference adds to the public’s perception the system is rigged against them.  When the Governor and school superintendents hold press conferences like this, it undermines confidence in the management of public funds.

It is games like these that make family choice in education so important.  If parents had options, local school administrators would be more responsive and more responsible, instead of launching hardball political tactics designed to take more money from local property owners.