By Janet Suppes
For months, PTA has been working with other education groups and our legislators to put together a comprehensive reform of how education is funded. We have had council meetings, town halls, neighborhood gatherings, and PTA e-mail discussions.
The last couple of weeks have been a flurry of activity in Olympia as our members have testified before the House and Senate in favor of the Basic Education Task Force proposals. The final result has been joint bills HB 1410/SB 5444. The bills are moving their way through their respective committees as we speak. But we realize that they are not a done deal by any means.
There is plenty of opposition to changing how we fund education. Many groups are comfortable with the current process of complicated formulas and ratios, which pretty much make accountability impossible. If you don’t know what the goal of the funding is, how can you tell if you successfully achieved it?
The BETF bills put into place a funding model that is understandable. Sides can debate the merits in terms that everyone can understand. Teachers will be rewarded for being excellent in the classroom. They will have the opportunity to learn from experienced teachers and acquire the skills needed to get students to reach aggressive standards.
The emphasis shifts from the teacher to the student. How effective is my child’s teacher at delivering the curriculum? What is it my child is expected to learn, and how is my school doing in getting to that goal?
Are the bills perfect? Of course not. There is room for better definition and compromise with the best ideas from other bills. But there is no reason not to move forward. The bills go into action starting in 2011, and phase in over six years. This is plenty of time to get to the best of all ideas.
The opposition is running a campaign of misinformation and misrepresentation. The current economic situation has to be dealt with by the Legislature, regardless of whether these bills pass. They do not dictate a course of action for getting us over this recessionary bump. I hope that teachers, parents and community members educate themselves on what is really being proposed, versus what some are saying is being proposed.
One way we can let our representatives know these bills are important to us is to endorse them. Just recently, two important groups voted to endorse HB 1410/SB5444, the Bellevue PTSA Council and the Bellevue School Board
How can you help? Write your representatives. Call your senator. Send them all an e-mail about how important it is to get this right, this year. It is too important to wait until “better times.”
It is an unprecedented time for education in Washington state. The proposed bills are exactly what PTA has been begging for over the past 20 years. We are so close. Help with the push.
Janet Suppes is president of the Bellevue PTSA Council
