Fed up with legislators’ inability to revise the state’s school funding formula, Washington state schools superintendent Randy Dorn has filed lawsuits against the state and seven districts, including Seattle, Tacoma, and several large suburban ones.
Dorn argues that the districts are illegally using local property-tax levies to pay teachers’ salaries instead of using state money, according to the Associated Press.
The state supreme court ruled in 2012 that districts are paying a disproportionate amount of education costs. While the state has poured millions of dollars into the formula in recent years to pay for transportation costs and prekindergarten, it has yet to spend more to increase teacher salaries, a key provision of the ruling.
