Goldy

With K-12 education accounting for about a third of state general fund expenditures, and a $5 billion-plus revenue shortfall projected over the next biennium budget, there’s little doubt that there will be at least some cuts in state funding of basic education… possibly as much as a billion dollars or more.

That could amount to over $1,000 per student, maybe two to three hundred thousand dollars a year out of your typical elementary school budget, a devastating cut that would result in larger class sizes and the elimination of “extras” like the arts, physical education, teaching assistants, tutors, counselors and other programs.  But it doesn’t have to happen that way.

The state could raise additional revenues by eliminating billions of dollars in special purpose tax exemptions, and by extending the sales tax to some personal and business services (something the state will eventually have to do if it refuses to adopt an income tax).  But if, as many observers assume, the Legislature and Governor lack the balls to do what’s necessary to give voters the services they want, they should just let local school districts raise the taxes themselves.

Currently, the maximum local levy for about two-thirds of the state’s school districts is limited to 24% of state and federal funding, with the remaining schools grandfathered in at a lid as high as 33.9% (Seattle is capped at 32.9%).  There are a lot of sound reasons for maintaining this policy, and I’m not opposed to the school levy lid in theory.  But in these desperate economic times we need to let local communities choose to adequately fund K-12 education if the state proves unable (or unwilling) to fulfill its obligation.

A temporary lid lift of say, an additional 10%, would give local school districts the flexibility they need to weather this economic downturn without cutting basic education services.  And of course, local voters would always have the final say.  Districts in areas of the state that oppose higher taxes might choose not to seek a higher levy, or might have any increase rejected at the polls, but there’s little doubt that the vast majority of districts here in the Puget Sound region would stand a good chance of passing a temporary levy hike if a compelling argument can be made to voters.

Governor Gregoire ran on a no new taxes pledge, and I don’t doubt she plans to try to keep it, but that shouldn’t keep her or the Legislature from granting local taxing districts the authority they need to ask local voters to tax themselves to make up for any cuts in state funding. It is simply unfair and unreasonable for anti-tax sentiment in the rest of the state to dictate local tax policies, or to impose a lowest common denominator approach toward something as crucial as K-12 education.

As we saw once again in last month’s election, Seattle voters have proven themselves extremely generous when it comes to funding the services and infrastructure projects we want.  Given the opportunity to ease the impact of proposed state K-12 funding cuts, I’m confident Seattle voters will prove generous once again.

That is, assuming, the Legislature and the Governor gives us that chance.

“It’s official:”

… for the last year, the United States economy has been in recession.

No shit, Sherlock.

Of course the “nonpartisan” National Bureau of Economic Research waited until after the election to make the pronouncement.  You know, God forbid accurate information influence an election one way or the other.

Dollars to donuts it doesn’t take a year to announce the end of the recession.

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been writing much recently, partially because I’m a little burnt out on politics, and partially because I’ve decided to take some time to clean house.  That is, literally, clean my house.

I’m not a very tidy person, and my obsessive attention to blogging and politics has taken its toll over the past year.  When my home office grew too disgusting even for me, I picked up and moved into the dining room.  When the dining room table (and floor and chairs) became too stuffed with papers, hand scribbled notes, unopened mail and other detritus, my daughter and I started eating in the kitchen.

And then there are the dust bunnies… dust bunnies the size of real bunnies, which I could swear, in recent weeks, have started to animate, and perhaps, plot against me.  Between the dog and the cat, the fur they shed and the dirt they track in, not to mention the come-by-honestly perpetual mess machine that is my daughter, keeping my floors clean is a Sisyphean task under normal circumstances, and after an election year of neglect, the underside of the bed and the couch and other pieces of furniture had started to resemble a strange, alien landscape, where but for the absence of surface water, new lifeforms might arise, and eventually conquer our world.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect my drafty old 1912 craftsman ever to be truly clean—at least, not to ex-wife standards—but I’d like to be able to invite guests over again without being embarassed, or risking an emergency call to Child Protective Services.  I don’t mind the mess so much, but I’m not proud of the dirt, and I can’t really get to the dirt without first cleaning up the mess.  So it’s gonna take some time.

That said, in addition to getting my house in order, I’m also taking some time to get my house in order, in the metaphorical sense, both financially and otherwise.  One way or the other, expect some big changes here at HA.  Hopefully, good changes.

But in the meanwhile, don’t be surprised by occasional spurts of light posting.

To the best of my memory, I’ve never shopped on Black Friday before.  For all but a handful of the past twenty years I’ve spent Thanksgiving in Philadelphia, and so it didn’t make much sense to go shopping there, only to lug it back home here, and though my family is no stranger to American consumerism, they never seemed much interested in braving the crowds.  But I know a bargain when I see it, and when I found myself inexplicably awake at 6AM, I decided to head on down to Fry’s to grab a 19-inch LCD HDTV for only $178, and maybe a couple of digital picture frames.

Jesus Christ… I had no idea.

After walking a quarter mile from the nearest open parking space, I found the aisles of the giant warehouse store clogged by a daunting check out line that made the Bataan death march look like a slow day at the 7-Eleven.  A seemingly endless parade of dazed bargain hunters, their shopping carts as engorged as their turkey filled bellies, slowly snaked around empty palettes of sold-out sale items, their contents long picked clean of their advertised prizes.  It was reminiscent of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia where the Arab forces loot the Turkish train… only more chaotic and less beautifully photographed.  As I stood there inspecting the carnage, I imagined a splendidly robed figure strutting atop the overturned shelving that once housed the 52-inch screens (1080P, 120Hz, “major name brand,” only $1198) while the warehouse echoed with the thunderous roar of shoppers triumphantly chanting “Awrence!  Awrence! Awrence!”

The 19-inch HDTVs?  Gone.  The picture frames?  Gone.  The 32GB USB flash drives, which I didn’t really need, but how could I pass one up for only $29.99? Gone.  Not that it really mattered, as there was no way in hell I was going to append myself to the end of that interminable line—assuming I could even find it—all for the sake of such trifles.

“Three hours… maybe four… who knows?” a stunned store clerk estimated when I asked how long the wait might be, and that alone was more than enough to send me home empty handed, no matter how enticing the bargain.  It was only then, as I trudged back to my car, that I noticed the piles of refuse littering the sidewalk, clear evidence that the line inside had once wrapped around the building’s exterior, where eager shoppers had obviously camped out, hours before the store’s ridiculously early, 5AM opening.

So this is Black Friday.  I’d heard about it.  I’d read about it.  I’d watched it on TV.  But I never knew, until today, how black a Friday it could really be.

By 7:30AM I was back at home, a cup of hot tea in hand, browsing for bargains from the comfort of my own living room.  Oh look… a 19-inch LCD HDTV, only $199, with free shipping from Best Buy.  Sure, it’s a little more money, but it doesn’t require a four-plus hour wait in line.  And given my experience this morning, that’s what I call a bargain.

I know I’m supposed to be angry and offended and all that, but I kinda agree with Paul Krugman:

A thought I’ve had: there have been some complaints from movement progressives about the centrism/orthodoxy of Obama’s economics appointments. To some extent this was unavoidable, I think: someone like the Treasury secretary has to be an experienced hand who can deal with Wall Street, and I haven’t heard anyone proposing particular individuals with clearer progressive credentials to hold that position.

And couple thoughts of my own.  First, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the Obama administration looking like a retread of the Clinton administration, with the very notable exception of the growth in economic disparity, the Clinton administration did a pretty good job managing the economy, transforming record deficits into record surpluses, and presiding over one of the strongest economic expansions in recent history.

But it’s also important to note that these are smart people, and it would be a mistake to expect Obama’s economic appointees to attempt to duplicate the policies of 1992.  A lot has changed over the past 16 years, a lot of mistakes were made (in both administrations), and a lot of lessons have been learned.

While the Clintonistas, under the direction of Robert Rubin, focused on balancing the budget, Obama’s appointees, many of whom are Rubin protegees, have made it clear that economic stimulus will be the top priority, even at the cost of massive deficit spending.  Indeed, even Rubin has publicly stated his support of job creation now, and balanced budgets later.

So no, I’m not all too concerned with the centrist bent of Obama’s Rubinesque economic team.  Smart, accomplished, well intentioned people… that’s always a good start.

Seattle School Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson has proposed closing seven school buildings, completely eliminating five programs, relocating all or part of nine, and creating one new Northend school in a plan that is sure to be at least as disruptive and unpopular as the previous round of closures, but politically, far more likely to proceed unchanged.

Buildings Closed
Genesee Hill Elementary
Lowell Elementary (APP)
Mann (NOVA Alternative High School)
Old Hay (Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center)
Pinehurst – (Alternative School #1)
TT Minor Elementary
Van Asselt Elementary

Programs Eliminated
African American Academy
Alternative School #1
Arbor Heights Elementary
Meany Middle School
TT Minor Elementary

Programs Created
Decatur K-5 (formerly Thornton Creek)

Programs Relocated
Lowell APP to Hawthorne and Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall EBOC to Bailey Gatzert
NOVA from Mann to Meany
SBOC from Old Hay to Meany
Pathfinder K-8 from Genesee to Arbor Heights
Summit K-12 from Jane Addams to Rainier Beach
Thornton Creek to Jane Addams (expands to K-8)
TT Minor K-3 Montessori to Leshi
Van Asselt to African American Academy

I’m not sure how many students will have their education disrupted by these closures and relocations, but the numbers are obviously huge.  Still, I wonder if these closures will generate the kind of effective opposition on the part of parents that I was a part of in 2006?  Goodloe-Johnson is simply a stronger and more forceful administrator than her predecessor Raj Manhas, as evidenced by her decision to personally lead the closure process rather than hiding behind a citizens committee, and she’s yet to burn through her political capital with school board or her public good will.  Furthermore, the relatively condensed nature of the process leaves affected school communities much less time to organize amongst and between themselves.

But I also think a sense of resignation has settled in over many Seattle schools families, or at the very least, a profound sense of fatigue, that should work to Goodloe-Johnson’s advantage.  Most of the programs on the list have been targeted before, and so last night’s announcement was more a confirmation of the inevitable than a shock.  At some point, it’s just no longer worth the fight.

I know from personal experience.  In 2006, I fought hard to save my daughter’s school, Graham Hill Elementary, and although we succeeded, and have since been vindicated with academic awards and bulging enrollment, I couldn’t help but come away more than little soured from what was an unnecessarily bitter and divisive battle.

As I predicted at the start of the previous closure process, many families responded by moving their children outside the district, and that’s exactly what we did.  My daughter now attends middle school on Mercer Island, where her mother moved in the wake of the closure fight.  I’m not proud of the move, and I would have prefered my daughter remain in city, but given the choice between Aki Kurose, my neighborhood middle school, and Islander Middle School, it wasn’t a hard decision.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this round of closures turns out.  In moving and splitting Lowell, Goodloe-Johnson has picked a fight with some of the district’s most affluent and connected parents, so there’s little chance these families will simply roll over.  And while closing the chronically under-enrolled African American Academy makes a ton of sense on paper (its large facility accounts for the bulk of the excess capacity in the the Southeast quadrant), this alternative program has many passionate proponents, and a dedicated, if small, community of families.

I’ve never been convinced that large numbers of school closings either improves education or saves all that much money in the operating budget, especially when you factor in the number of students who end up leaving the district and taking their state and federal subsidies with them… students who are often the least expensive to educate.  But in these tough economic times, there is little doubt that we will continue on this downward spiral for the forseeable future.

Word is they were burning the midnight oil last night at the state Office of Financial Management, before Gov. Gregoire headed out early this morning for a meeting in the other Washington.  Don’t know if the two are related, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Democratic Governors Association appealing for a bailout package of their own.  Hmm…

UPDATE:
The Pearse Edwards from the Governor’s office tells me Gregoire is in Olympia today, not DC.  Oops, my bad.  And…

“As for an ask of President-elect and the Congress, that would be an economic stimulus package that puts people to work and fixes our aging infrastructure. And that meeting is on Monday with her fellow governors from across the nation.”

… dogs kill people:

A man from the Tillamook-area who was accidentally shot over the weekend when his dog jumped into a boat and set off his gun is recovering.

Matthew Marcum was shot with his 12-gauge shotgun Saturday on the Tillamook Bay. His legs and buttocks were injured in the incident and he was taken to Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Health Center in Portland.

His father, Henry Marcum, says the 23-year-old Marcum was about to tie up an 11-foot open aluminum boat, when his 3-year-old Labrador, Drake, jumped into the boat.

Matthew Marcum says his dog, Drake, is a good dog and he isn’t upset with him.

Huh.  So I guess owning a dog doesn’t keep you safer than owning a gun, that is, if your dog has a gun.

Nope, Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen doesn’t do yoga.  How else to explain this editorial?

YOGA studios ought to be subject to the retail sales tax imposed on all physical-fitness services.

[…] Personal services are a growing segment of the economy, growing much faster than other types of retail trade. Yoga businesses have been in a catchall of services that include motivational speakers. It is time to quantify them and put them in the proper tax code.

So… um… if the sales tax were to be extended to yoga studios, how would this not be one of those dreaded tax increase thingies that the Times so resolutely opposes?

Of course, it would be a tax increase, and an absolutely reasonable one.  As even the Times points out, personal services are becoming an ever larger portion of our post-industrial economy, while retail trade proportionally shrinks.  For that matter, business services (accounting, legal, consulting, etc.) are growing much faster than retail as well.

The result is that our sales tax—WA state government’s largest revenue source—is levied on an ever smaller portion of our economy, year over year, creating a long-term structural deficit that simply cannot keep pace with either economic growth or the lockstep growth in demand for public services.

So in a state that insists on remaining one of the few in the nation to resist an income tax, it’s not just yoga studios to which the sales tax needs to be extended, but most other personal and business services as well.  And if the thought of that ties Frank up in knots, I know a yoga instructor who can help.

UPDATE:
As long as Frank’s paper is lobbying to extend the sales tax to other businesses, we might want to consider eliminating the current sales tax exemption on newspapers.  I’m just sayin’…

While we’re on the subject of education (and Seattle Times editorials), here’s another of the Times’ line items which I found curious:

• $926 million — Cancel the Initiative 728 money, or most of it. Officially this is for class-size reduction in the public schools, but the schools have folded it into everyday operations. Cutting I-728 money was done in 2003, when the budget was in a crisis, and has to be done again. That is the danger of budgeting by initiative.

“That is the danger of budgeting by intiative.” Cutting taxes by initiative, apparently, the Times has no problem with that, but spending money, well that’s a no-no… despite the fact that taxing and spending are both part of the budget process.  But again, that’s not my concern for the moment.

No, I just wanted to point out that a $926 million cut comes to over $900 per K-12 student over the course of the biennium, or roughly $450 per student per year.  For a typical elementary school with about 400 kids, that’s about $180,000 out of the annual budget.  How many teachers will need to be cut?  Do they increase class size for all the kids, or do they eliminate art or music or gym or reading tutors… assuming they have any of these left to cut?

And don’t think local school districts can make up these cuts by raising local levies.  In fact, some districts may have to reduce their local levies in response, as state law limits the amount of money raised from local levies to a fixed percentage of the district’s total state and federal funding.

The Times argues that this money was cut before and “has to be done again,” because raising taxes—any taxes—simply isn’t an option.  No doubt tough choices have to be made to respond to these tough economic times, but raising taxes is an awfully tough choice too, and it just doesn’t make sense to automatically eliminate one half of the budget equation when something as important as our children’s education is at risk.

Yesterday the Seattle Times editorial board argued that the Governor and the Legislature should balance the state budget without raising any taxes.  They don’t explain why we shouldn’t raise any taxes, it’s just kinda a given behind all their editorials, which they apparently don’t feel they have to explain.  But that’s not my concern for the moment.

Instead I want to briefly talk about how we fund higher education in Washington state, spurred on by this line item from the Times’ list of possible cuts:

• $600 million — Cut seats in state universities and community colleges. Cut some tuition waivers. Offset some cuts with increased tuition.

Of course, with unemployment rising, we’re already seeing a spike in demand, particularly at our state’s community colleges, as students of all ages seek the training and retraining necessary to compete for jobs in our rapidly changing economy, so the last thing you want to do during an economic downturn is to cut seats and raise tuition, thus denying unemployed and underemployed workers the opportunity to better their job prospects.  But then, education comprises by far the largest chunk of our state budget, so it’s hard to imagine pulling education cuts entirely off the table.

There is another solution though, that I’ve written about before, that could absorb some of these cuts in the short term, while allowing for an expansion of seats in the future, without costing taxpayers a dime:  dramatically raise tuition near market rates, while broadly expanding our state’s financial aid system.

Essentially, under our current system, every college student in the state is heavily subsidized, whether they need the subsidy or not.  This broad, per student subsidy lowers tuition rates for all, but still leaves college unaffordable for many potential applicants.  But perhaps worse, it strains our college and university system’s resources, leaving it unable to expand the number of seats available to meet existing demand.

But if we were to shift a larger portion of the state subsidy toward financial aid, while allowing tuition rates to rise, those students who can afford to pay the full cost of their education will do so, leaving more state resources to fund the education of those students who cannot.

When we talk about budget cuts, in education or elsewhere, we are talking about rationing.  Right now, with our broad, per student subsidy, we ration access to education.  Under a high tuition/high financial aid model we can maintain and expand access to higher education while rationing the state subsidy.

Hiking tuition is never popular, but then nothing about the upcoming budget is going to be popular.  So why not take advantage of this crisis to put higher education funding on a solid footing for the future?

I felt a little like Rip Van Winkle this morning, watching President-elect Barack Obama’s news conference, as he not only appeared awfully damn presidential, he pretty much sounded like he was already president.

Has anybody ever seen a cabinet take form this quickly, or a presidential administration seize control of the public and policy debate so soon after an election?  I suppose extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, but the fact the transition team has been able to act this swiftly is encouraging in itself.

Pam Roach blogs.  Who knew?

With Obama comes the changing of the guard.

The word is that democrat Congressman Adam Smith (WA-9) will be stepping up to a spot in the Obama administration. That leaves his congressional seat up for grabs. But, no grabs here.

State Senator Tracy Eide (D-Federal Way) may just have a lock on Adam Smith’s seat. Republicans will have to fight for it after Eide gets the appointment.

Huh.  For a woman who wants to run for King County Elections Director, you’d think she might want to avoid showing off her total ignorance of, you know, elections.  Vacant house seats aren’t filled by appointment; they’re filled by special election.  It says so in the Constitution.

… Neither particularly likes homework.

A headline from today’s NY Post:  “Barack Obama doesn’t fear the enraged, impotent Netroots.”

Yeah, well, whatever.

If that’s the sort of self-soothing that makes the old media and political establishment feel better about their own declining fortunes, they’re free to hide their heads in that particular hole, but personally, I don’t feel all that enraged or impotent.  In fact, I’m still a bit amazed at how far we have come in such a short amount of time… and daunted by how far we have yet to go.

This movement we’re part of will take a decade or two to reach full fruition, and we are a lot more patient and pragmatic than most outside observers give us credit for.