11-year legal battle over school spending finally ends
OLYMPIA — The landmark school funding case known as McCleary came to a quiet end Thursday but the conversation on how much the state must spend to provide students a quality education is far from over.
In a unanimous order, the state Supreme Court ruled the state had complied with its order to ensure ample funding for the basic education of students in the public school system by Sept. 1, 2018.
Justices also purged the state of contempt, ended a $100,000-a-day sanction and terminated its oversight in the case that began in 2007 when two families — the McClearys of Jefferson County and the Venemas of Snohomish — challenged the adequacy of state funding.
“It’s been a long time,” Patty Venema said Thursday. Lawmakers ”have come a long way and they have put a lot more money into education. But I don’t think they are done with this issue of funding.
“Education is evolving and changing, and if the state doesn’t stay on top of it, well, it may be another family, or it maybe my children who will need to step in and to make sure the state fully funds education the way our Constitution mandates it,” she said.
The case pivoted on a provision in the state Constitution that says it is the “paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children.”
In the lawsuit filed Jan. 11, 2007, the plaintiffs alleged that the state had not lived up to its obligation, forcing school districts to rely too heavily on local property taxes to make up the difference. They wanted the court to make the state rebalance the system.
When Patty and Tod Venema signed on, their daughter, Halie, was 15 and at the freshman campus of Snohomish High School and their son, Robbie, was 12 and in the sixth grade at Cathcart Elementary. Today he’s in college and she’s working in Seattle as an interior designer.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/justice-rule-state-has-fulfilled-an-order-to-fully-fund-schools/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=39e68877bf-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-39e68877bf-228635337