The McCleary Supreme Court Decision is ultimately what led to recent teacher walkouts. Now new information reveals local school districts donated public money to pay legal fees for the suit.

The Washington Policy Center released a report Wednesday about the landmark state Supreme Court decision.

The well-known battles over funding education were largely unknown until 2007, when a group called The Network for Excellence in Washington Schools (NEWS) filed the lawsuit, claiming the state violated the Constitutional requirement that they provide "adequate" funding for education. NEWS also provided considerable funding for legal fees and appeals when it ended up in the state supreme court. NEWS is an advocacy group claiming to seek excellence in Washington schools.

According to information obtained by way of Freedom of Information Acts, The Washington Policy Center learned the teacher's union, the Washington Education Association, donated at least $4 million dollars to help NEWS pay the legal fees for the suit. The McCleary decision requires certain amounts of money to be dedicated towards schools, regardless of the state's budget condition.

According to information obtained by the Policy Center, the WEA helped pay the legal fees for the lawsuit by twice imposing a special "assessment" taken from teacher's paychecks to pay for the suit, added to their regular union dues.

The information obtained by the policy center shows nearly half a million dollars was also donated by the 30 largest school districts themselves to help cover the legal fees from the McCleary Decision, money that could have been used to fund educational efforts.

McCleary has been used as the political club to force the legislature to increase school spending beyond the budget capabilities, and now it's being used to help justify Initiative 1351.   I-1351 mandates reductions in class sizes, but has no funding attached to it to pay for new teachers.

Because the legislature has yet to "dig up" funding for the initiative, dozens of school districts staged those one-day walkouts in protest - including the Tri-Cities.

According to the information obtained by the WPC, it does appear that hundreds of thousands of public school, tax-payer generated funds, were used to pay legal fees for a lawsuit that ultimately benefitted the teacher's union. Money supposed to be used by the districts was used for political purposes.


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