Long-time school advocates watching the Basic Education Finance Task Force [1] feel like Charlie Brown.  We're pretty sure Lucy will snatch the football away at the last minute, but we want to kick that football so hard and so far, we're willing to try again at the risk of making fools of ourselves.  Me, I'm betting this Task Force will be different, and that come December, it will propose a major overhaul of the finance system.  The members are savvy, knowledgeable, and, all but two are thoroughly engaged.  Dan Grimm, the chair, brings years of legislative and public finance experience, and a fresh perspective on the K-12 world.  Since leaving the state treasurer's office in 1997, he's been working in venture capital here and in Europe.

At Monday's meeting, their sixth, Task Force members stopped hearing presentations by experts and started framing and answering, albeit tentatively, their own questions. 

Rep. Skip Priest [2] (R-Federal Way) led off with, "Should basic education, enshrined in the state constitution as the Legislature's paramount duty, be redefined in statute to include pre-kindergarten?"  The tentative consensus: probably not, but look for ways to extend the state's early learning programs for at risk kids.

Next, "Should the state guarantee that all students will reach any particular standard, or should it guarantee that all students will have certain opportunities?"  No debate on this one among members: the state can't guarantee outcomes for any single student, but it can guarantee that all students will have opportunities which reasonably ensure success at reaching those standards. 

The thorniest question of the day: "Should we link teacher compensation to teacher performance?"  Rep. Ross Hunter [3] (D-Medina) said he's moving away from the idea of rewarding individual performance as it's just too difficult to design and implement fairly, in favor of offering school-based bonuses for schools that boost average academic growth per student in a given year.  But he said the bonuses couldn't be nominal, they'd need to be, say, $5,000 for every employee in the building.

Bremerton Schools Superintendent Betty Hyde proposed in a short draft paper [4] that educators be paid based on their duties and responsibilities, in three broad categories:  novice, professional, and lead.  No member argued compensation reform would be easy or should be forced on unwilling teachers, or that teachers shouldn't be paid more.

Sen. Lisa Brown [5] (D-Spokane) asked one of the other thorny issues of the day: "What's the role of local levies in a more amply funded K-12 system?"  That sparked lots of animated back and forth until Chair Grimm closed the discussion with the observation that perhaps levies are one of those issues where one's views pretty closely reflect where one sits.

The next meeting of the Task Force is scheduled for April 14 and 15 in Olympia.  First agenda item is likely to be a staff presentation suggested by Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-Fall City).  He wants to see all the statutes defining basic education, along with the policies that implement them, gathered together in one place.  He argues, "How can we get where we want to go if we don't know where we're starting from?"  It's an idea he proposed before as legislation, but perhaps this Task Force will be more disposed to listen to a minority party member.