PTA speaks for every child with one voice. As the largest volunteer child advocacy organization in the nation, we are the conscience of the country for issues affecting children and youth.
Do you want to stay informed and easily join efforts to advocate for our kids and our schools? The Shoreline PTA Council can help! Please subscribe, and we will send action alerts & informational broadcasts to you. Our action alerts include quick, easy ways to communicate with legislators, as well as other information or updates relevant to advocacy work.
Recent Update:
"Hello all,
The Washington State legislative session wrapped up on April 23nd at 10:30pm. We wanted to send you a quick update regarding some outcomes from this session.
While there were some education-funding wins during the session, we do not yet know exactly what the balance will be for Shoreline's budget specifically.
We will hopefully have more detailed updates from the Shoreline Public Schools Superintendent and the School Board over the coming weeks. (The May 9th School Board Meeting included this report on the legislative session, in light of School Board priorities.)
A few outcomes that we do know with significance to Shoreline's known funding gaps:
- Shoreline's regionalization factor will hold steady at 18% for the next two years. Shoreline's regionalization factor had been decreasing by 2% per year, so this stabilization is a very positive outcome for the Shoreline School District. (The regionalization factor is supposed to adjust allocations for staffing costs, such that districts situated in higher cost of living areas can pay regionally appropriate wages. Our declines in the regionalization factors from 24% to 18% results in about $7 million dollars a year less in resources for Shoreline Schools.)
- For special education funding, the legislature increased the multiplier. (The multiplier is how the additional money given per special education student is calculated, aiming to cover the costs of the student's individual education plan.) While not increased to the OSPI-recommended levels as we had hoped, the multiplier increase for Shoreline should help increase our state revenues for special education. These increased state revenues potentially reduce the amount of levy monies we use to cover special education -- freeing those levy monies for other needs. Currently Shoreline spends roughly 1/3 of our levy monies (which are supposed to only cover enrichment beyond basic education) on special education funding, because the state revenues have been too low to cover our actual costs. (Special education is basic education -- allowing our most in-need kids to learn to read, write, and do math.)
Currently, the legislators approved increasing pre-K multiplier to 1.20 from 1.15, the Tier I multiplier to 1.12 from 1.0075 (for students spending 80% or more of the school day in general education classes), and the Tier II multiplier to 1.06 from .995 (for students spending less than 80% in general education classes). OSPI had stated that the multiplier needed to increase to over 1.3+% for both the Tier I and Tier II, in order to close the existing funding gaps. (Learn more via the full OSPI report.)
- For special education, legislators increased access to Safety Net awards, lowering the threshold to 2.2 times the average per-pupil expenditure for districts with 1,000 or more students. In recent years, Shoreline has been receiving Safety Net Awards around roughly $2+ million, so this lower threshold should be positive for Shoreline's budget.
(What are Safety Net awards? When costs for a student’s IEP exceeds a set threshold, the school district can essentially apply for a grant. District staff must apply, separately for each student, at the beginning of the school year. Then the IEP is followed, the district pays for the staffing and other costs, then at the end of the school year, the state informs the district whether or not the Safety Net award was granted, and the state provides that funding. As you may have noticed, Safety Net awards require districts to have staff for the application process, as well as making the districts budgeting rather challenging due the long lag time between application and approval -- plus uncertainty of approval at all.)
- For special education funding, the cap increased from 13.5% to 15%. This increase represents an important improvement for Washington State public schools. That said, Shoreline Public Schools have been under the cap (currently ~11% of our students use an individual education plan (IEP)), so this change is quite unlikely to result in increased state revenues for Shoreline.
- Transportation funding was increased in a very limited way. The legislators increased monies available for special passengers, in the form of Safety Net awards. We are not clear how much this will help Shoreline's transportation funding gaps. Any receipt of these monies would require applications, tracking of expenditures, and only receive any official approvals at the end of the school year -- after the transportation expenditures were already spent.
- When asked about where education ranked in legislators priorities, Marie Sullivan (the professional lobbyist working on behalf of the Washington State PTA) noted that the legislators had a very competitive slate of priorities this session. She stated that we've lost a few education champions in the legislature over the past several years, and we may need to focus on finding and building-up new education champions in coming years.
- All in all, legislators are now fatigued after a marathon session, but now is the time for PTA advocates to regroup, prioritize for next year, and strategize how to continue to push for better funding for schools and identify which legislators will be our strongest allies.
- Any bills that died/did not pass this session can be tried again next year; and those bills will start in the position/committee in which they died this session. In other words, the bills that moved forward, but didn't pass during this session, get a bit of a "head start" next year, by starting further along the chain of committees through which they have to move.
- For further details on the outcomes of the legislative session in light of the Washington State PTA priorities, please see the slides by Marie Sullivan posted on the WSPTA website: https://www.wastatepta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-Post-Session-Debrief-WSPTA.pdf
Here are additional links, with further info:
2023-Legislative-Session-Scorecard
https://www.wastatepta.org/focus-areas/advocacy/
A Few Next Steps:
- If you are a parent, the following schools currently have open advocacy chair positions: Meridian Park, Parkwood, Cascade K-8, and Einstein. Also, in most PTAs, positions can be co-chaired by multiple people, in order to help share the load. Many hands make light work!
- What PTA's can do and not do to fill the funding gaps for school staffing: see this link.
- Jill Jackson and Malorie Larson are currently working on submitting a proposal to the Washington State PTA for a new legislative priority in Advocacy, which would focus on the overall education funding model, rather than specific funding gaps. There's lots for us to learn, and we may or may not have the proposed priority accepted by the WSPTA.
- School funding presents a complex issue. One of the best things each of us can do in order to be better advocates is to learn more about how exactly our schools are funded. Please take a moment now to learn more! There was a major shift in how Washington State funds its school that occured in 2018, due a lawsuit McCleary v. Washington. Washington State is unique in that our State Constitution outlines the state's paramount duty is "to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders." The McCleary lawsuit pushed Washington to shift its education funding model from being heavily supported by local levies directly funding their local schools, to being primarily funded from state revenues with state-set limits on allowed local levies. Washington State now uses a "Prototypical School" model to determine a baseline that is supposed to fund basic education across all schools, then only using local levy monies for "enrichment."
- Please reach out to Malorie and I via legchair@shorelinepta.org. We are open to hearing other ideas for next steps and welcome any support or help that can be offered. Just like other PTA and board positions, this is not our day job and we are squeezing in tasks and meetings when we can between our other obligations. If you have the time and the bandwidth to do more, please let us know!
Thank you so much for taking the time to be involved & engaged in supporting our schools!"
"Hello all,
The Washington State legislative session wrapped up on April 23nd at 10:30pm. We wanted to send you a quick update regarding some outcomes from this session.
While there were some education-funding wins during the session, we do not yet know exactly what the balance will be for Shoreline's budget specifically.
We will hopefully have more detailed updates from the Shoreline Public Schools Superintendent and the School Board over the coming weeks. (The May 9th School Board Meeting included this report on the legislative session, in light of School Board priorities.)
A few outcomes that we do know with significance to Shoreline's known funding gaps:
- Shoreline's regionalization factor will hold steady at 18% for the next two years. Shoreline's regionalization factor had been decreasing by 2% per year, so this stabilization is a very positive outcome for the Shoreline School District. (The regionalization factor is supposed to adjust allocations for staffing costs, such that districts situated in higher cost of living areas can pay regionally appropriate wages. Our declines in the regionalization factors from 24% to 18% results in about $7 million dollars a year less in resources for Shoreline Schools.)
- For special education funding, the legislature increased the multiplier. (The multiplier is how the additional money given per special education student is calculated, aiming to cover the costs of the student's individual education plan.) While not increased to the OSPI-recommended levels as we had hoped, the multiplier increase for Shoreline should help increase our state revenues for special education. These increased state revenues potentially reduce the amount of levy monies we use to cover special education -- freeing those levy monies for other needs. Currently Shoreline spends roughly 1/3 of our levy monies (which are supposed to only cover enrichment beyond basic education) on special education funding, because the state revenues have been too low to cover our actual costs. (Special education is basic education -- allowing our most in-need kids to learn to read, write, and do math.)
Currently, the legislators approved increasing pre-K multiplier to 1.20 from 1.15, the Tier I multiplier to 1.12 from 1.0075 (for students spending 80% or more of the school day in general education classes), and the Tier II multiplier to 1.06 from .995 (for students spending less than 80% in general education classes). OSPI had stated that the multiplier needed to increase to over 1.3+% for both the Tier I and Tier II, in order to close the existing funding gaps. (Learn more via the full OSPI report.)
- For special education, legislators increased access to Safety Net awards, lowering the threshold to 2.2 times the average per-pupil expenditure for districts with 1,000 or more students. In recent years, Shoreline has been receiving Safety Net Awards around roughly $2+ million, so this lower threshold should be positive for Shoreline's budget.
(What are Safety Net awards? When costs for a student’s IEP exceeds a set threshold, the school district can essentially apply for a grant. District staff must apply, separately for each student, at the beginning of the school year. Then the IEP is followed, the district pays for the staffing and other costs, then at the end of the school year, the state informs the district whether or not the Safety Net award was granted, and the state provides that funding. As you may have noticed, Safety Net awards require districts to have staff for the application process, as well as making the districts budgeting rather challenging due the long lag time between application and approval -- plus uncertainty of approval at all.)
- For special education funding, the cap increased from 13.5% to 15%. This increase represents an important improvement for Washington State public schools. That said, Shoreline Public Schools have been under the cap (currently ~11% of our students use an individual education plan (IEP)), so this change is quite unlikely to result in increased state revenues for Shoreline.
- Transportation funding was increased in a very limited way. The legislators increased monies available for special passengers, in the form of Safety Net awards. We are not clear how much this will help Shoreline's transportation funding gaps. Any receipt of these monies would require applications, tracking of expenditures, and only receive any official approvals at the end of the school year -- after the transportation expenditures were already spent.
- When asked about where education ranked in legislators priorities, Marie Sullivan (the professional lobbyist working on behalf of the Washington State PTA) noted that the legislators had a very competitive slate of priorities this session. She stated that we've lost a few education champions in the legislature over the past several years, and we may need to focus on finding and building-up new education champions in coming years.
- All in all, legislators are now fatigued after a marathon session, but now is the time for PTA advocates to regroup, prioritize for next year, and strategize how to continue to push for better funding for schools and identify which legislators will be our strongest allies.
- Any bills that died/did not pass this session can be tried again next year; and those bills will start in the position/committee in which they died this session. In other words, the bills that moved forward, but didn't pass during this session, get a bit of a "head start" next year, by starting further along the chain of committees through which they have to move.
- For further details on the outcomes of the legislative session in light of the Washington State PTA priorities, please see the slides by Marie Sullivan posted on the WSPTA website: https://www.wastatepta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-Post-Session-Debrief-WSPTA.pdf
Here are additional links, with further info:
2023-Legislative-Session-Scorecard
https://www.wastatepta.org/focus-areas/advocacy/
A Few Next Steps:
- If you are a parent, the following schools currently have open advocacy chair positions: Meridian Park, Parkwood, Cascade K-8, and Einstein. Also, in most PTAs, positions can be co-chaired by multiple people, in order to help share the load. Many hands make light work!
- What PTA's can do and not do to fill the funding gaps for school staffing: see this link.
- Jill Jackson and Malorie Larson are currently working on submitting a proposal to the Washington State PTA for a new legislative priority in Advocacy, which would focus on the overall education funding model, rather than specific funding gaps. There's lots for us to learn, and we may or may not have the proposed priority accepted by the WSPTA.
- School funding presents a complex issue. One of the best things each of us can do in order to be better advocates is to learn more about how exactly our schools are funded. Please take a moment now to learn more! There was a major shift in how Washington State funds its school that occured in 2018, due a lawsuit McCleary v. Washington. Washington State is unique in that our State Constitution outlines the state's paramount duty is "to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders." The McCleary lawsuit pushed Washington to shift its education funding model from being heavily supported by local levies directly funding their local schools, to being primarily funded from state revenues with state-set limits on allowed local levies. Washington State now uses a "Prototypical School" model to determine a baseline that is supposed to fund basic education across all schools, then only using local levy monies for "enrichment."
- Please reach out to Malorie and I via legchair@shorelinepta.org. We are open to hearing other ideas for next steps and welcome any support or help that can be offered. Just like other PTA and board positions, this is not our day job and we are squeezing in tasks and meetings when we can between our other obligations. If you have the time and the bandwidth to do more, please let us know!
Thank you so much for taking the time to be involved & engaged in supporting our schools!"
LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY
Shoreline School District is facing significant cuts (up to $18-19 million) to its budget for next year, which will deeply impact students and staff. Please read further for more information about the budget crisis and for action steps that we can take at the state and local levels. Thank you for getting involved and advocating for our students!
District Budget Deficit: How Did We Get Here?
School funding is complex, but a simplified answer is: Washington State's restructuring of educational funding in 2018 due to the McCleary case, resulted in the Shoreline School District having less flexibility and less revenue than under the previous funding structure. In addition, the COVID crisis then gave our schools: 1) new crises that drew down reserves, 2) new needs, paired with federal funding, which delayed budget cut decisions, and 3) declines in student enrollment. Shoreline is already at the max of our cap for our local levy, so we cannot raise more money locally to make up the shortfall. Thus, we face significant cuts.
Please learn more about the school budget outlook here.
School funding is complex, but a simplified answer is: Washington State's restructuring of educational funding in 2018 due to the McCleary case, resulted in the Shoreline School District having less flexibility and less revenue than under the previous funding structure. In addition, the COVID crisis then gave our schools: 1) new crises that drew down reserves, 2) new needs, paired with federal funding, which delayed budget cut decisions, and 3) declines in student enrollment. Shoreline is already at the max of our cap for our local levy, so we cannot raise more money locally to make up the shortfall. Thus, we face significant cuts.
Please learn more about the school budget outlook here.
Action Steps: What Can We Do?
1) Write to State Legislators
We are asking all parents to please write to your state legislators. The Washington State legislative session is currently underway. The legislature has a two-year cycle, so we need to act NOW, or we won’t have another similar opportunity until 2025. Let’s come together to call for increased education funding and push for Washington to restructure our education funding moving forward, such that we can maintain Shoreline’s high-quality education.
To make it easy, we’ve provided a sample letters to send to legislators. Real world stories from constituents are especially impactful, so we’ve included an area at the top of the letter where you can add how your family will be personally affected by the budget cuts.
Here’s what to do:
- Click the button
- Personalize the letter by filling in the bracketed section at the top.
- Add your name & address at the bottom.
- Send!
If the samples email does not work with your email provider, you can copy and paste the below text.
Legislators for 1st (Lake Forest Park) & 32nd (Shoreline) Legislative Districts:
- Lake Forest Park: derek.stanford@leg.wa.gov, shelley.kloba@leg.wa.gov, davina.duerr@leg.wa.gov,
- Shoreline: jesse.salomon@leg.wa.gov, lauren.davis@leg.wa.gov, cindy.ryu@leg.wa.gov
Dear Esteemed State Senators and Representatives,
I am a mom/dad at XYZ school. Currently, Washington state funding for Shoreline Public Schools is falling short of our school’s real-world needs. The coming budget cuts at Shoreline Public Schools means my child[ren] risk losing their… [paraeducator support, librarian, full-time nurse, family advocate, etc].
As concerned parents, we are asking you to act with the utmost urgency in this legislative session to address the current significant funding shortfall facing our school district for the 2023-2024 school year. This shortfall will impact our children, families, and communities.
Shoreline Public Schools are facing significant budget cuts, due to the following key state funding shortfalls:
● Decreasing regionalization factors and local levy limits
● Continued deeply underfunded special education services
● Misaligned and underfunded building and support staffing models
● Unfunded portions of IPD and SEBB for staff
● Ongoing unfunded mandates
The severe impact and inequity of leaving our state’s prototypical school funding model with little modification since the McCleary decision has never been more apparent. School districts had only 1.5 years following the decision to work with the new funding model before the COVID19 pandemic arrived in our state — upending schooling and bringing the inequities of our current system into sharp focus. A funding model based on enrollment – not student need – without baseline staffing needed to run each school and support the whole child while lacking an effective mechanism to account for the true differences in costs for operation and staffing in different areas of the state, regardless of enrollment, are coming to a head at this time.
We ask you to make the following significant investments in the 2023-2025 state budget:
● Fully fund special education – Fully fund the true cost of fulfilling our students’ rights to special education services by substantially increasing the multiplier, lifting the artificial cap, and preserving SafetyNet funding. In our district, this is currently an $8mil funding gap and accounts for 33% of our local levy funds.
● Support the whole child – Realign and fund the staffing allocations for building and support positions needed to have comprehensive learning and care for students in each building (principals, asst. principals, deans, counselors, librarians, nurses, psychologists, family advocates, custodians, and front office and nutrition services staff). Provide for universal school meals to ensure students have the nutrition needed for learning.
● Respond to regional costs – Establish sustainable, ongoing parameters for district regionalization based on the true cost of living and labor markets regionally. Create a predictable, regional approach to IPD / COLA salary increases to account for true cost of living. Note that when you pass an IPD the state funding only covers state allocations — leaving districts to cover the IPD increase out of levy funds for federally funded employees and employees not fully funded in the state model (e.g. special education teachers and staff, deans, nurses, counselors, etc.).
● Fund the true cost of transportation – Fuel costs are rising, fleets are in need of maintenance and replacement, and staff deserve the same support as educators.
● No unfunded mandates – Ensure all public school directives have the necessary funding included for implementation. Even the smallest additional cost is significant.
Our students don’t have another biennium to wait for their next two years of school. Please help us fully support them in this time as they deserve – especially after all they’ve just endured during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We know there are many competing priorities you are being asked to address this session; particularly around our state economy, community stability, and public safety. Education is not separate from these, but rather foundational to any of their success.
Sincerely,
(Your Name)
(Your Address — this allows them to confirm you are their constituent)
2) Sign Up for WSPTA Action Alerts
Subscribe to Washington State PTA’s Action Network Group to receive short action alerts that help support WSPTA’s advocacy efforts during the 2023 WA legislative session, including calling for protecting and increasing school funding. These action alerts provide quick, easy ways for families to communicate with their representatives on topics the legislature is actively working on.
3) Call your State Legislators
Once you have written, you can call! You can make a difference by picking up the phone and asking your representatives to fund our schools.
1st Legislative District
- Senator Derek Stanford: (360) 786-7600
- Rep. Shelley Kloba: (360) 786-7900
- Rep. Davina Duerr: (360) 786-7928
- Senator Jesse Salomon: (360) 786-7662
- Rep. Cindy Ryu: (360) 786-7880
- Rep. Lauren Davis: (360) 786-7910
Further Questions? Want to do more? Contact us!
If you have any questions or want to be more involved, please reach out to your own school's PTA Advocacy Chair or the Shoreline PTA Council's Advocacy Chairs, Jill Jackson & Malorie Larson.
Shoreline PTA Council's Advocacy email: legchair@shorelinepta.org
If you have any questions or want to be more involved, please reach out to your own school's PTA Advocacy Chair or the Shoreline PTA Council's Advocacy Chairs, Jill Jackson & Malorie Larson.
Shoreline PTA Council's Advocacy email: legchair@shorelinepta.org