Concerned about equity in schools? Reykdal says timber money is part of the problem
Urban communities are “disproportionately” receiving K-12 Common School Trust Dollars, despite the trust’s revenue coming from timber harvesting in rural areas, and State Superintendent Chris Reykdal said his office wants to change that.
The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Reykdal held a press conference Tuesday — the first of nine OSPI has planned leading up to the legislative session in January — to outline their priorities for “transforming” public K-12 schools in the state.
“We are a state that has to share in our interests,” Reykdal said. “Our kids deserve equitable opportunities to learn no matter where they are.”
The major challenge raised by OSPI is that the revenue being generated in rural Washington is “almost exclusively” ending up in counties such as King, Pierce, Spokane and even Yakima.
Reykdal said that the Department of Natural Resources is responsible for managing a trust for public schools, which is primarily funded through timber harvesting. Agricultural lands and leases also fund that trust, but 50-60% of the money is generated from trees. Reykdal said that money, in turn, goes to the legislature, which decides how to appropriately fund the school system.
The Washington legislature puts that money towards the School Construction Assistance Program, OSPI’s largest capital budget program, which the state uses to match funding when voters pass local school district bonds.
But to pass a local bond for school funding, 60% of voters in school districts must approve the bond issue and the accompanying taxes to support it. Even if smaller, less affluent communities can pass a bond, they might be “property poor” so the amount they are matched by the legislature isn’t always significant enough to transform schools, he said.
Due to the declining revenue from the harvesting of timber, Reykdal said OSPI wants to “stop depending” on those funds for the School Construction Assistance Program.
Reykdal’s office proposed a plan that they believe is “more equitable” and will include those proposals as part of their capital budget request for the legislature over the next few months.
First, he said, OSPI wants to “remove all of the Common School Trust Revenue from the School Construction Assistance Program,” and backfill the construction program with general obligation bonds or “other sources,” where Reykdal said most of the funding comes from anyway.
This would mean that the school matching program, which mostly benefits urban areas now, would be matched by general revenue. Trust dollars would then be dedicated to Common School Trust Activities in rural areas so that it would be more targeted to school construction projects such as retrofits. Even with that, Reykdal said smaller communities will undoubtedly still need support from the legislature.
Clean water in schools and rural communities is another effort being expedited by OSPI, Reykdal noted, as rural areas often have some of the oldest schools with old piping. OSPI is also seeking energy efficiency grants for rural schools to keep timber revenue in smaller communities. This, too, would put less pressure on energy production in those communities, Reykdal said.
Reykdal also proposed career and technical educational program grants for smaller communities to modernize rural school facilities.
The proposed effort by OSPI has other benefits too, Reykdal said.
“The additional opportunity here is to invest more in the forests themselves,” Reykdal said. “These are trusts to the benefits of the people of the state of Washington, and if we want those forests in 20 years, 50 years or 100 years to withstand the complicated and inevitable pressure of climate change that is upon us today, it is worth putting some of these trust dollars back in as an investment into healthy forests.”
Finally, Reykdal said that he wants other planning grants to move forward. Trust beneficiaries, such as schools in rural communities, should be the benefactors of wind and solar generation, he said.
“We’re asking the legislature to fully fund their matching program with general bonds, [and] we’re asking that those rural dollars generated from the trust stay in rural communities to focus on these priorities,” Reykdal said.
Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, said Tuesday he has concerns about how the project would affect rural and urban districts. He noted in a press release that some rural areas, such as Franklin County, have no timber harvests but towns such as Pasco, located in Franklin County, have seen exponential growth in the school district.
Additionally, he said, small towns have been hurt by the 50% decrease in statewide timber harvests.
“What I wanted was for our state’s schools superintendent to show how his agency would spearhead more efficiencies with school construction projects in our state so taxpayers can receive the most value for their tax dollars,” said Schoesler. “Besides efficiencies, we should harvest more timber from state lands. Unfortunately, Superintendent Reykdal once again is not sufficiently addressing our concerns about seismic and tsunami problems facing some school districts.”
But the Department of Natural Resources issued a statement saying it is pleased to know that Reykdal shares its mission of “protecting public lands, managing healthy forests, and providing benefits to the people of Washington.”
“DNR’s staff includes some of the world’s foremost experts in forest science, and we started managing our forests for future generations generations ago,” the agency noted in a press release. “Our trust duty to manage state lands to support schools and local governments throughout the state requires us to plan not just for today, but for the next two generations who follow, and we do so by sustainably managing our forests for timber while protecting them from disease and disaster.”
DNR’s statement also added that it is “proud to have generated nearly $1 billion in non-tax revenue to help construct schools across Washington state in the past decade, and we look forward to seeing further details from Superintendent Reykdal’s plan as they become available.”
Washington state is the second largest producer of lumber in the country, and 70% of that harvested timber comes from private forests, according to the Washington State Department of Commerce.
This story was originally published July 20, 2022 at 12:05 PM with the headline "Concerned about equity in schools? Reykdal says timber money is part of the problem."
