(This is an excerpt from a story published in The Olympian. LEV will provide analysis on the ruling in the coming days.)
A lower court had upheld school district claims that the state’s seventh-largest school district wrongly had one of the lowest levels of per-pupil funding (No. 263 out of 296 districts). The district’s web page with background on the case said this meant $11.5 million less for the 2006-07 school year than it would have received with fairer allocations.
But the high court reversed the earlier ruling in favor of the named parties, Gov. Chris Gregoire, former state schools chief Terry Bergeson, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen in his capacity as the Senate’s presiding officer, and House Speaker Frank Chopp.
There will be more said today in the news about this case. It may be the lesser of the major school-funding cases in the courts this year. A separate case is awaiting a King County judge’s ruling in a challenge of whether the state is meeting its overall obligation to fund basic education.
Johnson’s opinion says pay disparities have shrunk considerably since 1977 and he found Federal Way failed to show the disparities violated the state Constitution. More interesting and perhaps relevant to the still-pending suit over funding, Johnson said the district did not show the state was failing to amply fund education, and during televised arguments on this Federal Way case it was noted that students performance on testing in the district was higher than in some districts that had higher funding.
Read the full article at http://www.theolympian.com/breakingnews/story/1034027.html.
