Fact:  The McCleary decision did increase the amount of funding that schools receive, but it does not fully fund education.  Washington State uses an allocation model driven by enrollment to determine how much money a school receives to pay for what the state defines as basic education.  This model is heavily weighted towards directly funding teachers. Most things beyond teachers are not close to fully funded.  Granite Falls has 5 schools and approximately 2,150 students.  Here is a quick example of what is and isn’t funded by the state:

• Athletics are not funded at all. We use $600,000 from our levy to fund athletics and extracurricular activities.
• Curriculum such as textbooks, online materials, teaching materials, etc. is not at all funded by the state. We use $500,000 from our levy to fund curriculum.
• The state funds our district for .31 nurses (yes 1/3 of a person for the entire district). We have a nurse and/or a health room attendant at each school.  All nurses and health room attendants beyond the 1/3 person that the state funds us for are paid for out of our levy.
• The state funds us for .376 (again 1/3) of a student supervisor. These are crossing guards, recess supervisors, bus monitors, lunchroom monitors, hall monitors, etc.  Student supervisors are crucial for the safety of our students, but if we want to have more than 1/3 of a person we need to pay for them, out of our levy dollars.
• The state funds us for 3.345 para-educators. These are teaching assistants and we have more than 40 supporting our students and teachers in the classrooms.  We have to pay for these using our levy dollars and by looking for grants…but they are not funded by the state.
• The state funds about 80% of the cost for busing students to and from school and events. We have to use our levy dollars to pay for the other 20%. 
• The state funds us for .05 psychologists. Another way to look at that is that we would need 40,000 students before the state would fund us for 1 full psychologist.  We have 2.5 psychologists.  This is nearly 100% paid for by our levy.
• The state uses a separate model to fund special education. This model allows a district to receive “full special education funding” for up to 13.5% of its total student body.  Since approximately 20% of our students qualify for special education services, this means that nearly 1/3 of our special education students receive no funding from the state.  That $1,000,000 gap is paid for using our levy funds.

These are just some of the examples of things that are not covered by the state funding model.  We also use our levy to pay for additional teachers, assistant principals, additional custodians, technology staff, secretaries and administrative assistants and much, much more.

Fact:  All school districts receive the exact same staffing allocations based on enrollment but that does not result in equivalent funding.  This is because the funding model consists of two parts.  The first part, the allocation of staffing is the same throughout the state.  But the second part, the amount of money a district receives for the staff they are allocated differs greatly based on where you live in the state.  This is called regionalization.  It is designed to compensate for greater costs of living throughout the state, but what it really does is create inequities between neighboring school districts.  Here is a list of regionalization factors for Snohomish county school districts as of the 20-21 school year:

What does this all mean?  If you use Granite Falls as the baseline, it means that Everett, Lake Stevens, Mukilteo, and Snohomish all receive 10% more State Funding than Granite.  For every $100 Granite gets, they get $110.  Edmonds, Monroe, and Sultan all get 6% more state funding than Granite.  For every $100 Granite gets, these districts get $106.  And Arlington, Marysville, Lakewood, and Stanwood all get 5% more state funding than Granite.  For every $100 Granite receives from the state, these districts receive $105.  In reality, Granite receives more than $20,000,000.  10% ($2,000,000) or 6% ($1,200,000) or 5% ($1,000,000) are all very large numbers.  Only Darrington receives the same level of state funding as Granite Falls.

Fact:  Granite Falls actually is in the bottom 5 for average annual teacher salaries in Snohomish county and only slightly higher than the state average.  Below is a listing of average teacher salaries in our region for the 20-21 school year.  This is the most current data published on the OSPI’s website.

https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/safs/pub/per/2021/tbl19.pdf

As you can see, Granite Falls teachers are far from being the highest paid in the region, even though all of the areas listed above have to compete for staff from the same pool of teachers.  This data can be viewed for all school districts in the state of Washington by following the link above.

Fact:  Most school districts ask their taxpayers to help supplement the cost of education beyond what the state funds.  They do this usually through two levies.  The Education Programs and Operations (EP&O) levy directly funds school district programs that are not funded by the state.  This includes athletics, extracurricular activities, textbooks, curriculum, staffing, busing, and special education.  The second levy is referred to as the technology levy and is used to fund purchases of Chromebooks, software and software licenses, teacher computers, printers, projectors, internet, networking, and some small maintenance purchases such as roofing, boilers, water heaters, snow removal equipment, etc.  These levies can run for a maximum of 4 years and have to be approved by a simple majority of the voters in the district.  Most districts run these levies in the same election but some choose to split them out into two different elections.  Granite Falls runs them in the same election.  Below is a summary of all levies that were run in the 2022 election:

In the table above, Arlington and Lakewood did not run levies this year.  They are still active from a prior election.  Edmonds, Darrington, and Stanwood only ran one levy.  They choose to run their levies in different years.  Of the districts that ran both levies this year, Granite Falls is asking the LEAST of their taxpayers than any other district.  Below is a direct link to the election data.

https://snohomishcountywa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/87529/February-2022-LVP?bidId=

Facts:  The portion of the property tax for Granite Falls that goes to support the Granite Falls School District levies has actually been declining over time.  In 2019, the amount was low because the state had a one-year change to the collection laws that only allowed districts to collect $1.50 per $1,000 in assessed value.  This was changed back the following year.  Years 2023-2026 are a flat $1.84 because we very conservatively forecasted 0% growth in new property for all four years, even though our average growth over the last 5 years has been around 13%.  If you added 13% new property growth for 2023-2026, the rate would continue to decline.

Source: DA Davidson