By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
In an unusual and historically unprecedented outcome, Washington’s Supreme Court held the state in contempt for the legislature failing to provide a clear plan in funding public education by the school year 2017-18 pursuant to the McCleary ruling the court handed down in January of 2012.
According to documents the court in McCleary v. State, 173 Wn.2d 477, 269 P.3d 227 (2012) unanimously affirmed a declaratory judgment of the King County Superior Court finding that the state is not meeting its “paramount duty … to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders” under Article IX Section 1 of the state constitution. The court initially deferred to the legislature’s chosen means of discharging its constitutional duty, but retained jurisdiction over the case to monitor the State’s progress in implementing by 2018 the reforms that the legislature had recently adopted. Pursuant to its retention of jurisdiction, the court has called for periodic reports from the State on its progress. Following the State’s first report in 2012, the court issued an order directing the State to lay out its plan “in sufficient detail to allow progress to be measured according to periodic benchmarks between then and 2014.
The legislature failed to meet the courts demands for production of evidence of progress by the legislature and the court then found the state in contempt. The issue has brought up certainly the notion of separation of powers, but the possibility of sanctions has many in the legislature motivated to now act.
The McCleary decision derives from a rather complex lawsuit against the state on behalf of the McCLeary family and others who initiated an action against the state for inadequate education provided to children and thus violating the constitutional requirement for the state to provide basic K-12 education as a paramount issue.
Article IX Section 1 of the Washington Constitution reads:
SECTION 1 PREAMBLE. It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.
The court previously interpreted the preamble as being a core element of the constitution and not merely a formality. The history behind the case spans forty years. To digest, the Seattle School District suffered a great financial blow in 1972 when a double levy failed and the district was forced to take drastic action. The district sued the state for creating the conditions that required levies to fund basic operating expenses and shifting the burden to the local level. The State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the district and the legislature enacted several bills that among other issues returned funding sources back to the state with a ten percent cap on financing derived from levies. As costs for this mounted, the legislature provided waivers to the ten percent cap and some districts then became reliant on levies for operating costs; some caps were raised to thirty percent or more. Over time these and other reasons began to degrade the quality of education within the state. While the legislature provided for studies that recommended clear directions as to how the state could restore education quality levels, it became increasingly unwilling to provide the necessary funding. The liability began to grow with time as revenue sources for the state dwindled.
One study estimated the biennial funding requirement to be between two and four billion dollars. The legislature did not sufficiently act with legislation to provide this funding which ultimately resulted in Supreme Court action in 2012 with McCleary where the court interpreted that the State fully fund K-12 education.
In the Contempt Order it reads In 2013 the legislative session, the Joint Select Committee on Article IX Litigation issued a report on which the Court found that the State was not making sufficient progress to be on target to fully fund education reforms by the 2017-18 school year. Reiterating that the State had to show through immediate and concrete action that it was making real and measurable progress, the court issued an order in January 2014 directing the state to submit by April 30, 2014 a “complete plan for fully implementing its program of basic education for each school year between now and the 2017-18 school year,” including a “phase-in schedule for funding each of the components of basic education.”
The heat began to be turned up on the legislature when the Court ordered in June that the State appear before the court and show cause why it should not be held in contempt for violating the January order and why that if contempt is found that sanction or other relief requested by the plaintiffs in the case should not be granted.
During the show cause hearing on September third, the State admitted that it did not comply with the January order, but instead to provide the legislature with time during the 2015 budget session to develop and enact a play for fully funding K-12 by 2018.
The court held the State, but truly the Legislature, in contempt for failing to follow the lawful orders of the court. A mild constitutional issue resulted where some in the Legislature stated the court had no authority to usurp the separation of powers and had overstepped its bounds and entered into the procedures and politics of legislation. But the Court rejected this and stated that it “fulfilled its constitutional role to determine whether the State is violating constitutional commands, and having held that it is, the court has issued orders within its authority directing the State to remedy its violation, deferring to the legislature to determine the details.”
The court unanimously found the state in contempt of the January order but delayed imposing sanctions until after the 2015 legislative session where it would reconvene and review if sanctions would be imposed.
Options available to the Court to sanction the legislature or achieve compliance have been discussed and it is not clear as to what the Court could order. There has been speculation that the Court could declare tax exemptions unconstitutional or void specific budgetary allocations to force, at least fiscally, a sign that funding will be available by the McCleary deadline.
This certainly is proving to be an uncharted journey the government of Washington might find itself.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
McCleary v. State
Washington State Constitution
Contempt Order, Supreme Court of Washington
Bellingham Herald
TVW
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Awe…..no one wants to play stir the pot with you…..
“Knowing that a very high percentage of public school students doesn’t graduate, it is beyond my ability to comprehend why it is necessary, for 9 months of work, to pay $150K+ for “public school’ teachers with bachelor and advanced degrees to teach mostly “challenged” “students” how to barber hair, drive a fork lift, pound nails or replace a fuel injector”
Where do high school teachers make 150K?
They make that kind of money at Charlie Gibson’s kids school where he opined during the Bush/Kerry debates that Kerry’s proposal for increasing the tax on those who make $250,000 or more would hurt public school teachers! It got a laugh from the audience then, but I guess such folks like Charlie are incapable of learning. If teachers had to deal with kids like that, I think that they would merit such pay too.
“Nick Spinelli
I am all for paying higher teacher salaries as long as it is based on performance and not union rates. Make it competitive, like every job should be.”
I am certain the “public school” you attended and some others maintain the highest of standards and achieve the highest goals producing value-added citizens.
Knowing that a very high percentage of public school students doesn’t graduate, it is beyond my ability to comprehend why it is necessary, for 9 months of work, to pay $150K+ for “public school’ teachers with bachelor and advanced degrees to teach mostly “challenged” “students” how to barber hair, drive a fork lift, pound nails or replace a fuel injector. And when did it become the taxpayer’s burden to feed and babysit someone’s unwanted children (if you “unwant” to feed and babysit them, they must be unwanted, right?)? And however did the psychobabbling environmentalist wackos lounging in the faculty room, find that indoctrinating innocent children in how to protest and cry wolf about how the sky is falling would be desirable to the taxpayer, as it paved the students’ way to card-carrying membership in the neo-communist green, iconoclastic, anarchistic chaos movement du jour. I mean, radical politics in a public school – they should be put in prison. Either way, the expenditure is not commensurate with the product. You can buy cheap “educators” and instructors with high school diplomas and teaching certificates that aren’t in a union to do a respectable job of preparing the young denizens of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc., to drive for UPS, clerk a bank, sell a house, drive a bus, write a traffic ticket, book an airline flight, rivet a plane wing, be a dental assistant, spray a water hose on a fire, whatever, etc. I mean Bill Gates quit school, right. Fat lotta good an overeducated striking union teacher did him. And how about that old Crazy Abe Lincoln (I killed 1 million Americans and now Scotland honors secession, what!?)? He learned at home by firelight using borrowed books which he famously returned.
Additionally, pay trickles upward (trickle-up theory). If a teacher gets a raise, a superintendent, president, trustee, chancellor, etc. gets an even bigger raise (to do nothing).
Finally, most people, clearly, work 12 months per year. Striking, greedy teachers union teachers work 9 months, then enhance their income with outside work, in many cases, because they have nothing else to do. Kinda nice, huh?
Bottom line – what they hell do we get for all that money? Fork lift drivers who get DUI’s.
Bottomer line- no unions, no contracts, no advanced degrees, no administrators, no athletics, no ethnic studies, no waste and half the budget.
P.S. Does anybody really know what a CA State Univ. Trustee makes?
USA Today does: $400K+++ for the President of San Diego State – WHAT???
“Literally moments after the system’s Board of Trustees announced that it was going to increase next fall’s tuition by 12 percent, an additional $294 a semester, the board turned around and approved a salary of $400,000 for the new president of San Diego State, Elliot Hirshman — $350,000 in state funds and $50,000 from the campus’s foundation — a bump of more than $100,000 from what his predecessor made last year. “There’s never a good time to raise presidents’ pay,” said Michael Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for the Cal State system. “But when there are immediate needs, whether taboo or not, we have to fill them.”
Or not!
Just Say No!
Last. Post after snarking at people who can’t tell the difference between state and US constitution, What do I do? I write “SCOTUS” when talking about the Washington supreme court. Mea culpa.
Why are people such worshipers of Judicial power? They’re just lawyers who had friends in high places. I guess if NJ can sit back and let the Judges impose an income tax because of blah, blah, people will stand for anything. BTW, now that California is deep blue, practically a one-party monopoly, its only a matter of time before a “new” California SC declares Prop 13 unconstitutional along with the state death penalty. Coming attractions.
Wow, can some people distinguish between the Washington State Constitution and the US Constitution? I guess not. Look, the Washington SCOTUS has made their ruling, now let them enforce it. If I was in the legislature and the Washington SCOTUS started to take action against the legislature, I’d simply pass a bill cutting their salary by 99%, and pass another bill stating that the Washington SCOTUS had no jurisdiction in the case. Then let the judges deal with that.
The notion of preamble comparison with the United States Constitution and the Washington State Constitution’s Article IX Section 1 differs. The Washington Supreme court held that the word Preamble in article 1 does not nullify constitutional requirements of the state to be subject to directives of that section. The court ruled in McCleary:
AY, eh, whatever. It’s all good, I’m pretty sure he now knows that using a commenters real name or threatening to won’t be tolerated. It just clarified something that has been springing up lately.
annie – the admonition was to both of us to only use the names used on here. However, I am not surprised that you paint yourself as pure as the driven snow though.
Pushing the libertarian agenda…. No they don’t have the ability to look at things but monolingustic…..
Annie,
You’re smarter than to let the drama queen create a disturbance that you finally engage in…. Just let it roll….
PCS @ 6:15, Sorry, I have to take every opportunity I can. May I take this one, with which I disagree, the dismissive denigration of the very historic and widely disrespected Preamble to the Constitution:
“Paul C. Schulte
rafflaw – a Preamble is a Preamble.”
Alinsky not suitable? Horrors. Perhaps I made an error. It shouldn’t be too hard for me to fix it. There are so many who you view with contempt.
It was an Eric Holder $10M grant.
There. Is that all better?
Jonathan – np
Thank you, yes indeed.
Paul,
The strings attached by the Pentagon do not include who you can hire and what can be taught. They are paying for specific research in an area they have a need or military interest in. Much different from the Koch Brothers demands to Florida State and others.
rafflaw – the strings attached by the Pentagon often include who can or cannot be hired. Research grants have nothing to do with teaching, but teaching grants do. There are some on this blog, not myself, who think the Pentagon and the Bushes control many educational courses.
Paul and Ann,
Before we go down this road again over names, I have deleted your last two comments. We can (I hope) just stick with the names used on this blog as a courtesy.
“Well, I can’t wait until those same two guys show up with their fully legal semi-automatic rifles at George Zimmerman’s polling place or maybe Louie Gohmert’s”
Compound bows are a good counter to that.
PCS,
The Preamble does NOT “lay… out the purposes of the Constitution.”
The Founders TELL US what they did AND IT IS DONE, past tense.
The Preamble is not a suggestion.
The Preamble was not written to be ignored.
The singular American failure is the rejection of the Preamble by the SCOTUS. The SCOTUS is to assure that action comports with law. How can that be accomplished when the SCOTUS voids and nullifies the FIRST AMERICAN LAW. It is preposterous that the SCOTUS or any other entity does not find the Preamble “binding” and with full force. Its words are clear.
The Preamble Establishes, Insures, Provides, Promotes and Secures. This is a brief history of what the Founders did; action words telling us what they did. The Founders weren’t debating, they were telling us what they did. The Preamble does not equivocate. The first error of America is to ignore the Preamble.
The Constitution provides for governance within the parameters of the Preamble. The Preamble is the American context. The Preamble limits government to security and infrastructure as the “blessings of liberty” are our endeavors, businesses and industries conducted in the free markets of the private sector without governmental interference.
The entire effort of the Revolutionary Americans was to obtain freedom from governmental control, tyranny and oppression of the British monarchy. Liberal collectivists would have us believe the American Revolution was conducted to enslave the people and impose pervasive, tyrannical, oppressive and totalitarian government control over the citizenry.
_______________________________________________________________
Preamble
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
John – I know exactly what the Preamble to the US Constitution says, what we are talking about is this court using the Preamble to a section of the state constitution and enforcing it.
Annie,
Speaking of unintended consequences –
Remember how heads exploded when two members of the New Black Panthers showed up in front of a polling site (2012?) armed with one baton and two black berets?
Well, I can’t wait until those same two guys show up with their fully legal semi-automatic rifles at George Zimmerman’s polling place or maybe Louie Gohmert’s.
iconoclast
Quite right. I was not careful to distinguish the difference as both types bear scrutiny. And ‘reading carefully’ is very good advice.
Bunny, of course private institutions are free to accept any gifts and your call for full disclosure of those gifts and their requirements I fully support. However, I am not certain if you mean to end all government subsidies to public universities. If that is your intention, the schools will become even more unaffordable or offer a very inferior education.
docmadison – the Pentagon is a large contributor of ‘grants’ to universities. The money always comes with strings attached.
To clarify: read carefully next time you read a report about a large endowment going to a college or university. There’s a difference between endowing a chair IN the department and giving an endowment with the expectation of naming the chair OF the department.