Rainy Day Recess Episode 6, January 10, 2024

Fixing Washington’s Broken School Funding System

with Oliver Miska, David Knight, and Kendall Fujioka

[00:00:00] Oliver Miska: The state has a record breaking wealth inequality and one of the highest concentrations of millionaires and billionaires, and yet we have a school funding system that remains underfunded and inequitably funded that's failing to serve our millions plus students.

[00:00:14] Christie Robertson: Welcome to the Rainy Day Recess podcast, where we study and discuss Seattle Public Schools. With school districts across Washington facing severe budget shortfalls, and Seattle public schools recently stepping back from potential school closures, many are asking, “how did we get here and what can we do about it?” 

[00:00:37] Jasmine Pulido: To explore this, we spoke with Oliver Miska, a local education activist, leading grassroots efforts to reform school funding in Washington. Throughout our conversation, we'll also share insights from Dr. David Knight and Kendall Fujioka at the University of Washington whose research helps illuminate the funding challenges Oliver is working in collaboration with others to address. 

[00:00:58] Christie Robertson: A couple of notes before we start. First, we recorded these interviews before the winter break. Secondly, each person's opinion is their own. Also make sure to check out our show notes for all the references for this episode.

[00:01:11] Jasmine Pulido: Oliver, would you share your name and pronouns and any introductory information so people know who you are?

[00:01:17] Oliver Miska: Hi, yeah, thanks for having me. My name's Oliver Miska. I use they or he pronouns. I have a couple of hats I wear- as an educator here in Seattle Public Schools, as a community organizer with Washington Ethnic Studies, now I'm sometimes a little bit of a baby journalist for The South Seattle Emerald, and I just launched my own political consulting firm which is Solidarity Policy and Public Affairs this summer. So I work with a couple of different clients working on public affairs and negotiating with our legislature for policy reform. And I'm a lifelong Seattleite and a lifelong learner, so, excited to be here.

[00:01:56] Christie Robertson: Nice. I'm unreasonably excited to have you on here today, Oliver, because you have really strong principles and you're also very practical at the same time. And then you're also really good at explaining stuff, so that trifecta is really great for a podcast, so thank you so much for coming on. 

[00:02:13] Jasmine Pulido: I also want to add that the role that you play in translating academic research to grassroots organizing is just so important. I can't tell you how many times I've seen scientific research just go to the wayside because legislators don't really understand how to interpret that into policy or even what the importance of it is. So thank you for playing that crucial role in our education funding. 

Big Five Background

[00:02:38] Christie Robertson: On that note, I wanted you to talk a little bit about the background of the People's Big Five. 

[00:02:43] Oliver Miska: Yeah the people's Big Five is a grassroots movement that came out of the political reality that we live here in Washington. The state has a record breaking wealth inequality and one of the highest concentrations of millionaires and billionaires, and yet we have a school funding system that remains underfunded and inequitably funded that's failing to serve our millions plus students. And so it emerged out of that reality, because I kept hearing over and over again, whether it's at the state legislature or in school board meetings or working with students or working with parents that things aren't adding up and that we aren't listening to our experts. 

I was hearing professors like David Knight from University of Washington show up to Olympia, show up to WASA and WSSDA, some of the big school administrators and associations, and give his reports, present his research which would really break down why our school funding formulas are broken and how our reform efforts have been half-measure since McCleary. And yet, I would watch them pass legislation that was nickeling and diming with more half measure reforms. And it really led me to read a lot of his research and to try to turn that research into something that was accessible for folks to get behind and to actually demand our legislators support.

And so it was a lot of fangirling of his research and other professors at UW. there's so many folks doing such important work there. And so we were talking this summer and unpacking the superintendent's Big Three legislative priorities and how we felt like that plan was an incomplete band aid and we needed a sort of larger systemic solution. 

And so we added two key principles to challenge that conversation this session. And that was where the Big Five was born out of was like, we know we need to help support some of the consensus behind the Big Three. We need to fund it while we fix it. And, but, we have to build the building blocks for the changes that are going to take at least a couple of years, over the next couple of legislative sessions. We need to start doing that now and not keep saying three to five years from now three or five years from now or seven years from now.

Big Five Basics

[00:05:00] Christie Robertson: Can you just like, run through what the Big Three are and the other two that you guys have added? 

[00:05:05] Oliver Miska: Yeah, so the Big Three are the Big Three legislative priorities that are the stakeholders in education policy, whether that's the school administrators or the school board directors or the Washington State Parents Association, came out with the Big Three that were addressing three crucial basic education costs that aren't being covered by the state.

The first one being special education, the second one being student transportation, and the third being what are called MSOC costs, which are basic materials, supplies, and operating costs for districts, such as insurance. And I know y'all talked about those things a little bit in some of your previous shows. 

What the Big Three does is really address some of those basic education spaces where the current formulas aren't meeting districts needs.Those are an important 3 priorities but they aren't enough to address some of the systemic and structural inequities that are built into the system. The Big Five really address the structural issues. 

Four is about addressing our broken funding formula by passing equitable reforms for the prototypical model and programs such as the learning assistance program or LAP.

 And number Five is: we can't do any of that if we don't have a way of doing that that doesn't punish working people. And so Five comes in and says, “we need to balance our broken tax code by passing progressive revenue,” such as a wealth tax or a higher end or payroll tax or a luxury estate tax or capitals gain tax or a progressive income tax. 

There's so many options that we have on the table this session, and it's really actually looking so much more optimistic than months ago when we started talking to legislators when they said "there is not an inkling of an appetite for progressive revenue this session." And now we're hearing out of Senator Jamie Pedersen’s mouth on the mainstream news, the words "tax the rich". Words I don't think he's publicly said before like that. So I think there's a shift of the appetite amongst legislators for some of that progressive revenue.

[00:07:13] Jasmine Pulido: It really speaks to what kind of community activism and organizing has happened in just the last few months. So that's really wonderful to hear.

[00:07:21] Oliver Miska: It's been a bit of a shift, but we'll see if they're just virtue signaling. They've done this all before. And I think, the first virtue signal in chief was the paramount duty of our state in our Constitution, saying that we need to amply fund basic education. Professor Nancy Beadie at University of Washington has an amazing, 50 page summary, "The Paramount Duty of the State, A Brief History of Educational Equity and Inequality in Washington State", that I would recommend everyone read. It's a great access point to understanding the history of this issue of like inequality built into our funding system. 

[00:08:00] Christie Robertson: Totally. So with that history in mind, Let's dive into the Big Five. So Four and Five get into how funding comes into the system and how it gets distributed back out to schools. Can you explain, how the current education funding system in Washington state is inequitable? And what role did McCleary play in this?

[00:08:21] Oliver Miska: Yeah so we were supposed to have more funds going to poor school districts after McCleary. 

[00:08:28] Christie Robertson: And If you could summarize McCleary?

[00:08:31] Oliver Miska: Yeah. So in 2011, our state declared that we were not constitutionally funding our schools. What was happening was there was too much of a reliance on local revenues from property taxes. So it prompted the legislature to take action to fix our funding formulas. Which took them way too long, and they were penalized in the meantime while they couldn't figure it out. 

But finally, in 2018, they did what was called the McCleary fix to try to distribute funds across our school districts more equitably. They capped those local property tax levels, which made a lot of wealthier school districts who have higher property values angry, but increased state funds for those districts that couldn't raise that much money for schools - mostly rural, lower property value districts. 

That capping and that equalization didn't have the result that the state wanted. And David's research explains that there's still a $2,493 gap between higher poverty districts and lower poverty districts after McCleary. The equity gap is actually larger.

And we need to do two major things to change that: change our funding formula and change our revenue. 

[00:09:55] Christie Robertson: Kendall Fujioka is a PhD student with David Knight in Educational Policy, Organizations, and Leadership at the University of Washington. And she points out some of the difficulties caused by McCleary.

[00:10:05] Kendall Fujioka: I think one of the political considerations that's so hard is that because McCleary was such a long slog, and because The policies that were enacted really just went into effect in 2018/2019. So our kind of perception from the legislature is they're like, "we just did this, like we fixed it." so I think there's a bit of reticence on their part. They're like, "we did task forces for 10 years and we passed the policies." And we're like, "yeah, that's really great. But unfortunately those policies just haven't held up, in this test of time and particularly in light of COVID," 

The big thing from the McCleary paper that came out was the regionalization factors. and it was very well intentioned by the legislature because what kept on coming up as the problem was teachers aren't paid enough to live in the districts where they want to work. So the solution to that was, “Okay, it costs more to live in Seattle compared to what it costs to live in Yakima. So we're going to pay Seattle district teachers a 1.x rate.” But what ends up happening then is it's a lot harder for Yakima to recruit a competitive teaching force and retain a competitive teaching force. Because what happens is teachers will go there, get that experience. They'll get two to five years experience under their belt and be like, “I could do the same job 15 miles over and get paid 1.12 times what I'm making right now.” So it's definitely exacerbated inequalities there.

[00:11:31] Christie Robertson: Okay. Back to you, Oliver. And let's take Four and Five of the Big Five one at a time. Which one do you think that we should tackle first?

[00:11:43] Oliver Miska: So I like to think about the pie metaphor when I'm thinking about school funding. And there's the size of the whole pie, which is our budget for our schools. And we get that from revenue or taxes. And then there's the size of the slice of a pie, which is allocation. And that's how we distribute those funds to schools. 

Right now we have too small of a pie. Which means thinner and thinner slices. And so we like to think about this Big Five solution of dealing with our taxes and our funding formula for distributing funds as connected. Because if we think about, "Oh, we need to spend 50% of our whole pie on school funding," we stop thinking about our other social services that our government has to also pay for. 

So what we like to think about instead is to fix the school funding problem. Which is, “we don't have a big enough pie, we need to make the pie bigger, and we need a new recipe for that.” The recipe for that is a different tax code. 

And so, number Five, which is really the most important piece that I think the Big Five does, is connecting, "Okay, we need to change our funding formulas. The only way to do it is to get new revenue." 

So in order to think about "What does it mean to fully fund our schools," we shouldn't think about the budget as 50%, but instead think about our wealth as a state. And that's where we like to think about GSP or gross state product, which is our state version of the GDP. Right now, Washington State spends 3.14% of our GSP on K-12 education. That is way below average of what the national average is, which is 3.53%. Superintendent Reykdal explains we need at least $3 billion investment in schools to meet the national average of 3.53%.

And we say with the Big Five, “To fully fund our schools and to equitably fund our schools, we will need to change our prototypical model to fund at 4% of our GSP.” Because that's what global leaders like Chile and Norway spend on K 12 education. In order to raise 4% of GSP, we'll need to raise new taxes. 

[00:14:06] Christie Robertson: Here's David Knight, reinforcing this point.

[00:14:10] David Knight: When we look at the total amount of spending as a proportion of the state's gross domestic product or gross state product, the state's economy has been steadily growing the past few years. In the kind of post-pandemic world, we're seeing more and more economic activity, which means more revenue that can be taxed and invested into schools and invested in our future.

So the metric is, sometimes we'll call it effort, or it's the amount of effort that states put into their K 12 system. And it's a measure of the per pupil spending statewide divided by gross state product. For the past... as far back as the data go, multiple decades, Washington has been below the national average on that measure, which means we have a flourishing economy and we're investing less than the national average in our K-12 system.

When we look at other states like Mississippi or states that have a lower gross state product that spend less than Washington, they're actually investing a much larger share of their economy in their K-12 schools. So It suggests that we do have the wealth available to invest. It's just a matter of will and then setting priorities to where we want them to be.

[00:15:24] Christie Robertson: Back to Oliver Miska.

[00:15:26] Oliver Miska: And so, where does that tax income come from? Who is paying that tax? Is really the question of number Five. What we're arguing is, we cannot keep punishing working class people with sales and property tax. These are regressive forms of tax that pay for most of our schools. And instead we need to pass things like a wealth tax, a high earner payroll tax, or a capital gains tax, an estate tax, and a progressive income tax. And that's the only way that we will be able to get closer to taxing a more equitable part of our state's actual wealth. 

Number Four - equitable distribution

[00:16:03] Christie Robertson: So Oliver, let's talk about allocations and number Four of the Big Five.

[00:16:08] Oliver Miska: If we think about how are we distributing the wealth in our state, when we're talking about number Four, once we say we have this giant pie, we accomplish all this tax revenue, what can we do to make sure we're distributing funds to districts with higher poverty? Yes, we need to do a whole-scale resale of the prototypical model. But one way we're really advocating that we know is going to be on the table this session is LAP, the Learning Assistance Program.

Currently, the eligibility criteria for this equity measure make it such that you have to have 50% of your students in that school qualify for free and reduced lunch. What happens there is that districts will put students in high poverty, concentrating them into schools so that they can qualify for those funds. So the eligibility criteria further perpetuate the segregation of students according to class. And so we need to change the eligibility criteria. 

And we also need to increase those funds. Because they're an insignificant part of our total spending, right? They're less than 2% of our total budget for our K-12 schools. 

And there's the interest really tangibly this year to double, triple those funds that are going to high poverty school districts. But then also make that tiered eligibility criteria so that we're not blocking schools that have 49% of their students in high poverty getting zero of those equity dollars from the state.

[00:17:45] Christie Robertson: Are there legislators that are backing that idea?

[00:17:47] Oliver Miska: So yeah, last session Senator T'wina Nobles put forth a bill that would deal with LAP. And yet Senator from the 41st LD, Lisa Wellman, who was the chair of the Senate Education Committee, did not give that bill a hearing last session, to much dismay of a lot of school districts. And so we're really looking forward to the session. There's a lot more pressure on some of those legislators to actually hear that bill, coming from superintendents, from school board directors, from experts like David Knight, and now hopefully from a lot more parents, educators and students. 

[00:18:28] Christie Robertson: I've heard about the difference between distributing based on the prototypical school or based on student need. And I have just trouble picturing, what does it mean to distribute based on student need. Is it similar to if we fixed LAP or is that a different idea?

[00:18:44] Oliver Miska: Yeah, so that's a huge, complicated question that, joint state task force and other big agencies and researchers have been dealing with for a long time. It makes me think just to go back a little bit to like, how did we get here? And like, why? 

In 2009, when the state's Joint Task Force on Basic Education was formed, they had 17 months to put together a bunch of reports on what to do for the prototypical model. And there were estimates that up $7.5, $8.3, and $10 billion per annum to actually fund the prototypical model that would serve our students. And they said it would take over a six year period starting in 2012 to make the changes to the prototypical model to get it to where it needed to be. Because it was passed with numbers that they knew did not fully fund our schools. And so they've known this for a long time. They know they're not fully funding the prototypical model, and they have the reports and the research telling them how to do that better. 

I like to always say like, "How do we fix this to actually align with individual student needs?" One person answering this as an advocate is an impossible task because there's so many line items on these bills and all these policy formulas that are so immensely complicated, that I'm afraid of answering that question with any detail. They have had reports on this from experts that have been saying for a long time that we are not actually getting to the root of what students need. 

And you can see that because we have the weighted staffing standards in each of our local school districts that try to make up for that. So one place I point to people, I say, if districts are having to figure out their own formulas to equitably distribute state funds that aren't being distributed equitably, then we should be looking at some of those WSS, or Weighted Staffing Standards numbers to figure out how we should fix the prototypical model. And even that doesn't go far enough.

[00:20:59] Christie Robertson: That makes a ton of sense. 

[00:21:01] Jasmine Pulido: Are there any more questions, Christie, that we want to clarify, at least for a basic understanding of Four and Five legislative priorities?

[00:20:09] Christie Robertson: I do have this question about LEA. What is it? And what role does that play? And does it relate to Four or Five?

[00:21:15] Oliver Miska: Yeah. What is LEA? So the Local Effort Assistance program is one of two equitable measures that have been used and David has researched that are designed to equalize tax bases so that we are not sending more money to some districts than others.

[00:21:34] Christie Robertson: Here's Professor David Knight of the UW, again. 

[00:21:37] David Knight: If you look at Washington's tax system, Washington's actually rated 49th out of 50 in the extent to which our revenue system is regressive. In other words, the extent to which higher poverty communities pay a disproportionate share of taxes into the system. We rank essentially last. We were 50th up until the state finally passed the capital gains tax. We've moved up to 49th. I think Florida now holds that position.

[00:22:04] Christie Robertson: This kind of helps explain why expanding LEA is so crucial, right, Oliver? It's one of the few tools we have to make our system more progressive. 

[00:22:16] Oliver Miska: What LEA does is complicated. But ultimately, districts that are not able to raise as much from property taxes are given a certain amount of state funds so that they're closer to districts who have that capacity. So for example, Mercer Island, Seattle, Bellevue, et cetera can raise the revenue for local levies easily at a lower rate than for example Tukwila or Yakima. And what happens is the state kicks in to get to that threshold. Unfortunately, LEA is designed such that it still has a gap of what you're getting for your local revenue. So it's part way there. 

If we do increase that levy lid cap, what we're gonna see is an exacerbation of what are already inequitable rates for those. So Mercer Island is paying a $7.35 tax rate, while Yakima is paying $10.67, and Tukwila is paying closer to $12. So we're taxing people, predominantly people of color and lower income in lower property value districts, at such a higher rate than we're taxing folks who have such higher incomes and higher property values.

And so, we like the concept of LEA. We want to see it funded correctly. But we don't want to see further rises to property tax rates where we're punishing working class folks and further pushing them out of their neighborhoods on the outskirts of the cities.

[00:24:24] Jasmine Pulido: I hear a few things there. One is that we're like, “let's just replace equity with equality” and then also “let's not actually do equality, but like sort of half do equality.” I really don't feel that speaks to the values of Washington State.

And in the context of, all the schools are not fully funded, so we're all underfunded. But if we lift the lid, Seattle could pull away from the fight. And the system stays inequitable and leaves higher poverty districts without, and less change is possible. But then on the other side of things, not lifting the levy lid means a district that could be doing better could go without in the name of equity and that we are penalizing those students until we can all get it. Why not lift the levy lid short term and still fight long term? What are your thoughts on that?

[00:25:21] Oliver Miska: Yeah, I would say back to legislators, "Why are you forcing a regressive half measure solution when you've had years and years of progressive revenue advocates fighting for these changes that you haven't taken action on?" And now they're complaining, "Oh if we pass wealth tax or all these taxes, we won't have the revenue immediately. And, using the levy lid lift is a quick, short term fix." What happens next session when we go to negotiate with lawmakers to say, "okay, let's do this thing. Let's work all together for this long term solution."? Seattle's lobbyists, Bellevue's lobbyists, everyone else is sitting there pretty. Why would they look for a statewide solution that's ultimately not going to distribute more wealth to them, when they have a solution, that's meeting their immediate needs?

They're saying that we're against a potential fix when they've been against the fix that's been staring at us since 1933 when a couple of white guys on the state Supreme Court banned an income tax. After 72% of Washingtonians voted in support of an income tax. I would punt it back to the legislators on that one.

[00:26:12] Christie Robertson: Maybe this is the last thing for the basics. Can you talk about the different possibilities for progressive revenue? I know you named them quickly, but what are they?

[00:26:21] Oliver Miska: Yeah, that's actually great timing, because in the South Seattle Emerald, we're having an article with the Balance our Tax Code Coalition folks, who are really the experts, on some of the progressive revenue options that are going to be up this session. And I really recommend folks check out  Balance our Tax Code for a really great analysis of just how much funds are going to be raised, and what are the different policy options.

Just a quick overview of a number of them. The wealth tax is one of them - up to 1% tax on folks who have over $100 million of wealth. That number is actually very much up for debate, it seems like, this session. Some people are saying $50 million. The governor came out with his proposed budget 2025-7, and it included a wealth tax that would raise $3.3 billion over the 25-27 biennium. Which is a bit of a nudge to the incoming governor Ferguson to say "You should support the wealth tax". And to nudge the legislature to include that into their budget. That's a great thing. 

High earner payroll tax, similar to Seattle's jumpstart tax, is something that the state's also looking at. There's also what's called a REIT tax and a luxury estate tax, that would increase taxes on estates over $3 or $5 million. And it would actually lower property tax and estate taxes for lower value homes. So it's a progressive change. 

There's also expanding the capital gains tax. We had over 64% across the state of our voters approve the capital gains tax. They want the capital gains tax. That's the first time we've ever passed a significant progressive revenue source. And voters In a historic numbers want to keep it. And that's a huge shift, historically. KUOW had that great map showing that shift of support for the capital gains tax over the last 10 years. And yet, when you talk to some lawmakers, they say that their voters, especially conservative voters, are against this. Conservative voters are not against taxing elitist city billionaires. They are not. 

The other revenue, the income tax, is a huge one. The constitutionality of the income tax is something that's debated by endlessly smarter people than I am. But the superintendent of public instruction told me that 100% it is legal to do a 1% tax on income. Right now. This session.

[00:28:55] Christie Robertson: Really? 

[00:28:56] Oliver Miska: 100%. And you could exempt the first $200,000 for folks. So we could have a progressive income tax, even if it's just 1%, in our state right now. But our lawmakers say that is absolutely not on the table. And they won't even discuss it with us when we go to them. Meeting with Senator Jamie Pedersen, that is not on the table. It's not an option. Why not?

[00:29:18] Christie Robertson: Why do you think there's so much pushback on that? I was shocked when I moved here and found there was no state income tax.

[00:29:27] Jasmine Pulido: And I thought I read, if I read this correctly, that we've been trying to move that for a hundred years. So why is it so hard? Why is it so hard for us to do that if we have a lot of support within our state community?

[00:29:45] Oliver Miska: We also have the highest concentration of millionaires and billionaires in some of these states. So there's a lot of really powerful folks who are working against that at the state level. They have been doing so for a hundred years, as you said. They're scared of working people coming together to demand it. They're scared of moving the needle and breaking the floodgates. Because they're saying "Oh, you know, then we'll just expand it to be 10%, 20%, and then all the wealth will be drained, and every wealthy person will be moved out of the state", and the risk of capital flight. And a lot of fear mongering around "One day you too will have $200 million, and you don't want to be taxed by the big daddy state of Washington." It's an unfortunate false narrative that we'd be impacted negatively by a progressive income tax. But so it goes.

[00:30:39] Jasmine Pulido: I would love to just ask this, and then maybe we can move into strategies. My question is, if we did change the tax code, then would that be helpful in addressing what is supposed to be a challenging budget environment for this legislative session? Because we're talking about education, but that would be generating revenue for the entire state and other services. Is that accurate?

[00:31:08] Oliver Miska: Yeah, every different tax has a different place where they deliver or distribute that money. So the wealth tax doesn't all go to education. It goes to different services as well. So if we're passing a checklist of progressive revenue options, we have a bunch of taxes going to a bunch of different social services, as opposed to just passing one or two new progressive revenue sources.

The important part about trying to pass as much as we can this session is that we get to start the process of implementation. Because that's where lawmakers are continuously complaining. Implementation on these new tax revenues, they're gonna take time, and won't give us an immediate fix. Shouldn't we start doing that now so we have access to that income sooner? But it really will take having multiple new sources of revenue, and we won't stop at a wealth tax. We should be fighting to expand the capital gains tax as well. But it's really yet to see if that's going to be on the table. It's not popular amongst Democrats, but I have talked to some senators who said that should be on the table this session. In leadership, actually, too.

[00:32:18] Christie Robertson: That's great to hear.

Should we move to strategy?

Strategies

[00:32:20] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, yeah, definitely. 

[00:32:22] Christie Robertson: Do you want to ask it 

[00:32:24] Jasmine Pulido: Okay. Oliver, what resistance or challenges has the People's Big Five campaign faced from legislators or school districts, and how are you navigating these?

[00:32:35] Oliver Miska: Yeah, it's a good question. There's so many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to legislative priorities. And one thing we really wanted to do was to be able to say "yes, and...". Some folks don't see Big Five as a " yes, and...", even though we incorporated the big 3. They see it as an offense to their legislative priorities and risk breaking consensus in the education community.

And we think we're actually building consensus in the education community that there's a connection between our tax code and how we're funding our schools. A lot of education folks won't touch our tax code 'cause they say "We don't care where we get the money from. We care that we just get the money." And we're saying "It matters where the money comes from. We do not wanna tax working class people to pay for all of our schools. We want to tax the wealthy to pay for our schools." 

Is this going to solve all our problems this year? We don't think legislators are going to pass a serious overhaul of our prototypical model this year. And I hate saying that out loud. I would love for them to do it, but it's going to take multiple years to do that. And they've known that since 2012. It needs to start happening now. 

But we also didn't do everything right in the Big Five. We don't have a full plan for how everything should be spent, and we don't have a plan that's incorporating every policy that needs to happen under the sun to do the protections that we need in our schools. For example, protections for immigrant students and families with the impending and current persecutions by the federal government is not something that's in the Big Five, but something that we absolutely need to be addressing in our schools. Because we have town halls meant to support immigrant families, like in the Edmonds school districts that are being canceled and doxed by right wing advocates. That is just one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. 

And so we need to be doing a lot better to be standing in solidarity with working families and immigrant families and doing so much more to be in partnership with parents and families and see what they wanna spend in education. 'cause we don't have all the answers on how we should fix everything in our school system.

[00:34:51] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I was actually last weekend at the Filipino South End Town Hall. Those conversations that I got to listen to for migrant and working families felt so underrepresented in the overall conversation we're having about funding. A lot of us agreed that there should be town halls like that in all of our schools. That was just a comment. There's no question there. 

[00:35:13] Christie Robertson: What you were talking about was reminding me of  we had read a little while back the document on David Knight's site at the UW where there was a convening of a set of superintendents and they made a five year plan for how to get all this stuff implemented. And I just thought it was a really succinct and clear description. Is that something that's still going on? And are they still meeting? And, is there legislative proposals coming out of that?

[00:35:43] Oliver Miska: There's a lot of ongoing conversations now at the legislature. One thing you could see from something like this is another joint task force or something that gets started or put forth this session to then help implement that plan. But there's so much, there's already been those task force. There's already been those reports. We already know that the prototypical model is not working. Yes, it's great to have a little bit of a vision, but as I see it right now, the five year plan is too little too late and just doing band aids this session. And I don't think band aids are going to fix it.

It's a many year long strategy, right? So for example, the LAP bill this session will come from language from last session with recommendations from stakeholders and agencies. Usually, you'll have to have already ran some sort of policy that failed the first year so that there's some traction, and then there's conversations in the interim with stakeholders. They're negotiating. They're negotiating. A new session, a new bill will drop with a couple of tweaks that might make it more likely to pass this session. Then whether or not it passes this session, it'll get more tweaks in the interim after this session and come back again. It's really a grueling and slow legislative process. And if they're not hearing from constituents that a bill needs to get a hearing, or pass from policy committee to the fiscal committee, or pass to the floor of the house to go to the Senate, then they might not do something on that this session. And be like, “Yeah, we can just do that next session.”

[00:37:26] Christie Robertson: So in some ways, the Big Five is maybe just about changing the conversation like the background as opposed to lining up a set of bills. 

[00:37:36] Oliver Miska: I wish we were important enough to determine and write all of the policies that were on the table this session. All that work has been getting done for years by advocates. Like Balance Our Tax Code coalition or Invest in Washington and all of these different groups that have been advocating for school funding and for fixing our tax formula.

But that work of developing the policy and the research was already done before Big Five came about. We just knew that there were going to be options on the table because there have been, and we've been fighting this fight with real policy options on the table that the legislature has just said no to. So we said “enough is enough.” Yes, they're on the table. Let's make sure they're on the table and let's actually see if we can get a chance of passing one of them. 

[00:38:25] Christie Robertson: Cool. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.

Looking Ahead

[00:38:27] Jasmine Pulido: So Oliver, what does success look like for the People's Big Five campaign, both in the short term and the long term?

[00:38:36] Oliver Miska: In the short term, passing a checklist of progressive revenue options this year and Starting that building blocks so that we can implement those new revenue sources and implement those new taxes is a great short term win. And just proving to the legislature that there's a growing consensus amongst people across the state that we need a new funding formula and we need to start doing that now would be a huge win. 

In the long term, we really just want to build a movement and pressure that can last longer than this session and is so much bigger than the Big Five that will really evolve into something that brings together educators, caregivers and parents... and students, who are really the ones that have been so vocal on this and yet absolutely sidelined from the conversation. And so if we can build that power and build something into the next session where we're coming up with new policies to put onto the table, then I think that will be long term a great win. Just making this whole conversation more accessible and more popular I think is our goal really long term. 

[00:39:27] Jasmine Pulido: I think now is the time. We're now starting to see the effects coming about with the massive threat of school closures that just happened and was cancelled. Right now is really the time that everyone's paying attention. "Oh, we really have a problem." We knew we had a problem, but now we really see what could actually happen if we don't address this funding issue. And I guess that leads to our last question. Can you tell us how parents, educators, and community members can best support the People's Big Five and advocate for systemic change in education funding? 

[00:40:35] Oliver Miska: Yeah. There's, well, the legislative session starts January 13th. And so one of our biggest goals is just to make sure we're educating folks leading up into the session. There's community town halls being hosted by, whether it's the Seattle Council PTSA, or by MLK labor delegates, and unions from across the state are really coming together to organize and host advocacy forums and create spaces where we can disagree and agree, and really just show that there's growing movement for making these changes. So going to those town halls is a great place to start so that you can be educated and be in the conversation before you feel like you have to do anything. 

The Big Five is working within a sort of very loose coalition of orgs, and we put out an advocacy roadmap with all of the different advocacy events that are leading up to during the session that people can go to and it's all on a link tree https://linktr.ee/fundwaschools. We also have drop in organizing and planning meetings and info sessions from 11 to noon every other Sunday throughout the session. So people want to learn more about what we're doing within this broader coalition. We're inviting folks into that space to ask questions, to learn about what's next and what actions will be coming up and how to prepare for them.

Our resources also include a calendar that you can subscribe to get all the events, all the Zoom links, all the info, all the resources onto your calendar. So that's cute and convenient. We have reading lists and video lists of interviews, of research papers, of government documents, of the things that we use to write our articles that really help break things down.

And we have some advocacy toolkits for folks to take action locally to get their school board and their superintendents and their city councils to support and pass legislative priorities that are aligned with the Big Five. 

We're partnering with unions and PTAs, really reaching out across the state. And so, invite us to your events. We're happy to collaborate and give talks to different groups that are hosting their own events. We'll be having toolkits come out to host events at your schools, sit ins, teach ins, and provide slides and resources and all that sort of stuff. 

We'll be hopefully hosting two days of action later in the session March 5th and April 15th. To do pretty much anything to disrupt and ensure that The legislature takes action this session. So mark your calendars for March 5th and tax day, April 15th. Maybe it's a little on the nose, but we'll be gearing up and building with a lot of our coalition partners for those actions over the next couple of months.

[00:43:28] Christie Robertson: We always have extensive show notes and we're going to put links to all the references that Oliver has mentioned and all of the links so that everybody can get involved.

Do you have any final words? um, Anything we left out or anything you want to try to sum up?

[00:43:35] Oliver Miska: We want to make this fun and accessible. We want to make it a place you can come and not have to be an expert. I'm a self taught person. I just geek out on these things. I haven't been to school for education funding. It's about just being okay with not knowing everything and just coming with that idea that you are not going to know everything, but together, we can know a lot more.

And yeah, I would encourage folks to come with an open mind and that. We're here to not make sure that everyone's saying the same exact thing. But that you're able to just come and say something that is meaningful to you and that you can be empowered to talk to legislators. We'll train you to talk to folks. We'll prep you. And we're not going to tell you what to say, but we will help you figure out how to take action in a way that's meaningful for you, whether that's meeting with legislators, emailing folks, organizing an event, baking cookies, bringing sack lunch for sit ins, whatever it might be, there's so many ways to get involved. And it looks so many different ways, so maybe, I think that's what I would share.

[00:44:42] Jasmine Pulido: I'm glad you said that, because as a parent of three kids, I was like, “Wow, this is a lot of information.” I think it could be really easy to get overwhelmed. So hearing that you can come in at your own capacity and with whatever you know now and still engage effectively with legislators and the movement is really wonderful to hear. Thanks. Thanks for that, Oliver.

[00:45:04] Christie Robertson: All right. And thank you so much for being with us today. Hopefully we're doing our small part to help educate parents. And...

[00:44:42] Jasmine Pulido: And students, and caregivers, and educators. I know we have a pretty broad audience. And I just have to say, Oliver, Christie was totally fangirling over you while you were talking. I could just see it.

[00:45:12] Oliver Miska: You're silly, you all are so funny.

[00:45:26] Jasmine Pulido: Anyway, so I hope this is just the first of many conversations that we'll have. So good luck. 

[00:45:33] Christie Robertson: Keep up the good work.

[00:45:34] Oliver Miska: Thank you all so much. 

[00:45:36] Christie Robertson: And that concludes this episode of Rainy Day Recess. Thanks for listening and share your thoughts with us at hello@rainydayrecess.org. A big thanks to Oliver Miska, David Knight, and Kendall Fujioka for sharing their knowledge and thoughtfulness and passion with us. 

[00:45:54] Jasmine Pulido: You can find our show notes at our website, www.rainydayrecess.Org, or you can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. 

[00:46:01] Christie Robertson: If you like our work, please consider donating to us. And thank you to our current donors. 

[00:46:07] Jasmine Pulido: Yes. Special thanks to Lester Mayo and Manzana Movement for our music. 

 I'm Jasmine Pulido.

[00:46:13] Christie Robertson: I'm Christie Robertson. Stay curious, stay cozy and join us next time for Rainy Day Recess.