The court held the Legislature in contempt of its 2012 McCleary decision last September and threatened sanctions at the end of the 2015 legislative session if lawmakers couldn’t come up with a phased-in plan that would fully fund K-12 public education by 2018.
While it’s being debated whether the state Supreme Court can even impose such sanctions or where money to pay the fine would come from, it demonstrates the state’s urgency — to a point. The court’s 11-page order didn’t specify how legislators could comply, leaving some legislators to question the court’s intervention at all.
It took lawmakers three special sessions to negotiate the 2015-2017 operating budget that allocated an additional $1.3 billion to expand all-day kindergarten, reduce K-3 class sizes and pay for school supplies, operation costs and school buses. It’s unlikely one more special session of partisan politics during summer will resolve the more than $3 billion deficit to reduce class sizes further and adequately pay teachers and other school employees. A full schedule for funding is even more implausible.
As it is, local jurisdictions are paying for much of public education through school levies, which legislators have come to rely heavily on for additional funding that they’re not covering. And the number of basic school supplies that students must bring at the start of school grows every year.
By the time legislators come up with the billions more needed, it may no longer be enough, as the cost of living and operational costs will have increased that much more.
The legislators have already been paid their overtime, and any fines paid will likely come at the further expense of taxpayers. The three branches of our state government have failed yet again to deliver what is the premise of this debate for dollars: educating our children.