It's a bitter cold Wednesday morning in Spokane as at least 300 people file into the grand ballroom of the downtown DoubleTree hotel for the Inland Northwest's inaugural State of Education summit.
Inside, a who's who of our region's schools fills the room, including superintendents, teachers, students and even businesses invested in Spokane's public education.
For about an hour, a panel of five local superintendents addresses the state of public education in the region.
"We're continuing to reinforce the important role that public education plays in our community, not just for the empowerment of the individual, but the wellness of the community and the strength of our local economy," Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Adam Swinyard says. "Public education is consistently asked to step up and meet the needs of kids in our community, and we're really proud of our consistent ability to step up and do that."
The Jan. 22 event was organized by Greater Spokane Inc., the regional chamber of commerce, to showcase its belief that public education is directly tied to Spokane's economic outcomes.
"At GSI we've always done work around education, and we think that the economy depends on education," says Erin Vincent, GSI's vice president of education and talent.
From school funding and student readiness to higher education and a new campaign to convince voters to fund K-12 schools, here are some of the takeaways on the state of Spokane's education.
UNDERFUNDED SCHOOLS?
"Since 2018 our legislators have mandated 77 new requirements in public education. That's a lot for us as small districts," Deer Park Superintendent Alexa Allman tells the audience at the summit.
But it's not just an issue for smaller school districts, Swinyard says. Asking any school district to implement a new policy or requirement without the proper time and funding can be challenging.
"Twenty years ago, the list of things a public school was required to do could fit on a page. Now the list of those requirements is a volume," Swinyard says. "That's not repudiation of public education, but it's not sustainable to ask school districts to do more without extra funding."
For example, a law passed in 2023 and enacted in 2024 requires all elementary schools to hold at least 30 minutes of daily recess for students' physical health (something most schools already did). Additionally, in 2024 another law required all school districts to keep opioid overdose reversal medication doses in every public school, amending previous law that exempted school districts with less than 2,000 students.
The superintendents on the panel are also concerned about the state's funding of public education. Riverside School District's Superintendent Ken Russell says the state has been putting a smaller percentage of its budget into K-12 education in recent years. In 2019, 53% of the state's operating budget went to public education, while in 2024, only 42% went to education, he says.
For reference, the state allocated $27.3 billion to K-12 public schools in the 2019-2021 budget while in its 2023-25 budget that funding increased to $30.6 billion.
"If I was an economist I would say, 'Let's put more money in the young people, and that likely will cut down on the cost of when they become adults if they get a solid education,'" Russell says. "Whether it be incarceration, medication, whatever the case may be that we put state funds into, don't you think we would diminish that cost from an economic long-term standpoint if we invest in [public education]?"
Beyond the operating budget, some administrators say that there are gaps in funding, especially when it comes to special education.
"There have been significant gaps in terms of what schools are expected or needing to fund, and then what we receive in terms of state funding," Medical Lake School District Superintendent Kim Headrick tells the audience. "When it comes to special education we have about a $350,000 gap [in our district], which is small, but when you look at the percentage of our funding, is significant, and for us, it's really important and critical."
Medical Lake focuses on providing and building inclusive classrooms. This means that students with disabilities are learning alongside their typically developing peers, rather than being separated into another classroom.
"Those students have access and are able to succeed right alongside their peers. And you know what we found? It works. Our elementary school on [Fairchild Air Force] Base in two years has shown significant growth in both [English language arts] and math, and our students with disabilities are learning at high rates," Headrick says. "What we need to do is really invest in that work. It takes dedication. It takes professional learning for all staff, and it takes opportunities for our kids to sit in those classrooms because they deserve it."
Following the superintendents' remarks about education funding, an audience member asks the panelists if they think a McCleary 2.0 lawsuit is a possibility in Washington.
In 2007, two families sued the state for not meeting its constitutional obligation to fully fund public education. By 2012, the Washington Supreme Court ordered the state to fully fund K-12 public schools in what's known as the McCleary decision.
A week before the summit, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said the state could be sued again if it doesn't meet its school funding obligations.
After a brief silence following the question, Central Valley School District Superintendent John Parker says it's too soon to say.
"Perhaps that's rhetorical and I shouldn't be answering that, but from everything that I'm hearing so far, it's really unknown," Parker says. "It's early in the legislative session to really know about. There are concerns that even our own state representatives and senators have expressed as far as the funding, but at this point I'm not aware of anything."
STUDENT READINESS
"If you would have asked a kindergarten teacher 10 years ago, 'Are there any kids in your class that aren't potty training?' they would look at you like you've lost your mind," Swinyard said last week. "If you toured our schools today and you asked that same question, you would hear a shocking answer."
Over the last decade, school districts have seen students coming into school less prepared than ever before. While part of that can be attributed to the pandemic's effects on student learning, Swinyard argues that the issues impacting the entire Spokane community also impact students in public schools.
"We're a community that's struggling with some pretty significant issues around employment security and housing security, and we have challenges with drug and mental health use that are impacting the community at large, and those things touch kids in a pretty intimate way," he says. "We have more kids coming to us with more challenges that are less ready than ever, and those kids all come into our public schools. We don't pick and choose who we serve, and that's something we're really proud of."
Additionally, that lack of school readiness in some areas can be directly connected to a lack of adequate child care. That's an ongoing issue in the Medical Lake School district, Headrick says.
"The West Plains is considered a child care desert. We have over 40% of our families that say that they are currently not accessing early learning at all," Headrick explains. "So we need to step into that [because] I think that gets kiddos off on that right foot."
HIGHER EDUCATION OPTIONS
Before Allman, the Deer Park superintendent, moved to rural Eastern Washington, she worked in the urban Bellevue School District for nearly two decades. After moving, she began to notice that her rural students didn't all have access to the same opportunities to explore higher education or technical career fields.
"I think the biggest difference ... is that not all of the students have equal opportunity and access to exposure, to see what all is out there," she explains. "It's part of our responsibility to partner with institutions such as the Spokane Colleges and our universities that are right here."
Higher education partnerships are important as they allow schools to offer opportunities for students to do college courses in high school and even get an associate's degree along with their high school diploma. These partnerships also allow districts to offer students more career and technical education classes, such as construction, culinary arts, automotive technology, web design and even photography.
Through partnerships with local universities and colleges, as well as nonprofits and businesses, Swinyard says communities can work together to meet some of those needs.
"We will not always agree on the solutions, that's just the way of the world, but we have to work together to operate on the same set of facts," Swinyard tells the audience. "A key part of that is the work that Greater Spokane Incorporated is going to be doing with their IN Schools campaign."
IN SCHOOLS
At the end of the education summit, GSI announced its new IN Schools campaign, a five-year effort to help people better understand public schools through workshops and community conversations.
"We're going to share the real stories that highlight the successes, but also the challenges," says Lisa Poplawski Lewis, GSI's vice president of development and partnerships. "Because we all have successes and challenges in our business, and schools are a business."
At its core, Lewis says this campaign is meant to push back against any misinformation.
"It's not uncommon for people to approach me in public and say, 'I saw something on social media, and I can't believe you guys are doing that in your schools,' and it's like, we don't do anything even remotely like that," Swinyard says. "It's critical that we're operating off the same set of facts, but I think it takes some different type of intentionality in this day and age to share information, talk to people about the work that's happening in our schools and then provide a healthy space for us to have discourse as a community on how we move forward."
Behind the scenes work has been underway for months as GSI leaders have coordinated conversations with local school districts, higher education institutions and businesses, in an attempt to raise $1 million over five years. That money will be used to fund public conversations and workshops to increase the public's knowledge about what's going on in schools.
One issue GSI hopes to tackle with this campaign is the bond failures that school districts have experienced, sometimes multiple times, in the last year. By providing educational information to the public, the organization hopes to fight blatant misinformation regarding school funding.
"Tax funding around education in Washington state is super complicated," GSI's Vincent says. "We want to demystify some of those things that get in the way of people hearing the K-12 story."
As GSI works to make it easier for schools to pass their bonds, the Legislature is already taking its own steps to address the issue with Senate Bill 5186. The proposed legislation, which is supported by many of the superintendents on the panel, would change the required 60% voter approval for construction bonds to 55%.
So far, a majority of the region's school districts, 11 to be precise, have signed on to support the IN Schools campaign as it rolls out over the next half decade.
"It's really important right now to talk about what is good in our institutions if we want them to survive. We can't expect that our 250-year-old American K-12 education system just survives without positive energy and reinforcement," Vincent says. "I think the business community and GSI see that it is necessary and that it is good to create the conditions in our region for thriving. We want our amazing K-12 schools to innovate and to be strong and to continue to support our kids and create opportunities for our future workforce." ♦
