McCleary Impact on School District Budgets and Spending per Student

There are various claims and rumors about the impact the State Legislature’s changes to the school funding formula will have moving forward. We did some digging and came up with projections the State is using. These projections assume that the local levy is capped at $1.50/$1000 (max of $2500 per student) starting in 2019/2020 and that the State will take on the bulk of the funding. That funding comes from an increase in the State School Property Tax (from $1.98/$1000 of assessed value to $2.90/$1000 in Clark County).

First, here is the link to the projection on the District Budgets for the entire State. We took the opportunity to highlight the ten (10) district in Southwest Washington and then put them into a table: soK12TotalFunding_0629  What is the essence of the document? Here is a table showing the key data:

Second, here is the link to the projected data for spending changes on a per student basis: soK12PerPupil_0629   The essence is encapsulated in the table below:

Takeaways?

1. The largest increases (percent) go to those districts who’s spending was on the lower end.
2. The average for the four (4) years appears to range from 4.5% per year to 7.5% per year.
3. The funding increases that started in 2015/16 carrying forward have been significant.
4. By shifting funding from local to State control has been lost on a local level.

Your thoughts?