CHIMACUM, Wash. -- Sitting next to her mother in the high school library, Kelsey McCleary shares her wish list.
More foreign language, vocational and advanced courses. More field trips and extracurricular activities. Maybe even a dance team.
Hopefully, before she graduates.
"I hope that something happens before I get out of high school," the 16-year-old sophomore says. "I only have two more years left."
Kelsey and her 11-year-old brother, Carter, a fifth-grader, are among about 1,100 students who go to school in Chimacum, a close-knit, four-way stop of a town on the Olympic Peninsula and the epicenter of what could be a landmark legal challenge to the funding of basic education.
Their mom, 46-year-old Stephanie McCleary, a school district employee, is the public face of that lawsuit. The lead plaintiff in McCleary v. State of Washington, she agreed to get involved because of her children.
In February, King County Superior Court Judge John P. Erlick ruled in their favor, ordering the Legislature to establish the actual cost of education, then pay for it through "regular and reliable sources."
It's uncertain what will happen next. The state Attorney General's Office has given notice that it plans to appeal.
Kelsey was 13 when the lawsuit was filed in 2007, the same age her mom was in 1978 when Washington's Supreme Court made a similar ruling that it's unconstitutional to require local levies to help fund basic education.
Three decades later, inadequacies and inequalities in state education funding persist. School districts -- particularly those in poorer, rural areas like the Yakima Valley -- continue to struggle to bridge the gap between what the state pays for public education and what it actually costs.
"It really is a have and have-not world here in Washington," says Mike Blair, superintendent of the Chimacum School District, 10 miles south of Port Townsend. "That is not constitutional."
Chimacum, while not as impoverished as districts in the Yakima Valley, is representative of a broad spectrum of districts that rely heavily on local levies as well as grants, donations and fundraisers from parents and boosters.
And it wasn't alone in this fight. Chimacum was one of more than 70 plaintiffs in the McCleary case. School districts in the lawsuit, rich and poor, included Yakima, Spokane, Seattle and Bellevue.
"This isn't just our issue," McCleary says. "It didn't matter if it was a big district or a small district, the stories were the same: piece-mealing education together."
Opening statements in the six-week, nonjury trial started Aug. 31, about the same time the approximately 1 million students in the state's 295 school districts were heading back to class.
Seven months later, the McClearys and educators statewide hope Erlick's ruling will bring some financial stability to their schools. More money could pay more teachers, fund more classes and programs, and ease districts' dependence on local tax levies.
Erlick didn't set a timeline for complying with his ruling.
The state, which argued at trial it is fulfilling its constitutional duty, filed its intent to appeal on Thursday.
Attorney General Rob McKenna's spokeswoman, Janelle Guthrie, told The Associated Press that McKenna decided to appeal to ensure the Legislature has the greatest flexibility to address public school funding in the future.
She also said Erlick's decision seems inconsistent with the legal framework laid out by the state Supreme Court in other school funding cases.
The lawyer for the coalition, Thomas F. Ahearne, says he has no doubt his side will prevail.
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While the Legislature this session approved some education reform and funding measures, lawmakers have been hampered by the state's $2.8 billion budget deficit.
In the last biennium, the Legislature appropriated $12.2 billion, or 40.9 percent of the state's general fund, for K-12 public education.
The state argued the McCleary lawsuit was moot because lawmakers last year pledged to pump more money into the state education budget by 2018.
The judge disagreed.
"A defendant's intent to cease its legal violation in the future does not negate the existence of a defendant's violation contemporarily," Erlick ruled Feb. 4, concluding: "State funding is not ample, it is not stable and it is not dependable. Local districts continue to rely on local levies and other nonstate resources to supplement state funding for a basic program of education."
His statements echo comments educators have been making for years.
"The disparity between educational costs and state and federal funding is alarming," says science teacher Kit Pennell, who's taught in Chimacum for 20 years. "It feels so unfair that we continue to ask our voters to dig deeper. ... Small, rural districts can never match the affluence of Mercer and Bainbridge islands. But our kids are no less important."
The local maintenance and operations levy provides $1,738 per student in Chimacum, compared with $1,899 in Bainbridge Island and $2,423 in Mercer Island.
In Yakima, it's $894. The state average is $1,680.
While the maintenance and operations tax rates in Chimacum and Mercer Island are the same -- 90 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value -- Mercer Island is able to collect more money because it has a larger tax base.
It's a scenario repeated statewide. Because of higher property values, wealthier districts collect more money with similar or relatively smaller tax rates than poorer districts.
"We sued because we feel -- and still feel -- that the state is not meeting its paramount duty and relying too much on levy funds to fund public schools. Paramount means first and foremost. It means all children -- not just rich kids from Bellevue but poor kids from Yakima," says Blair, the Chimacum superintendent as well as the president of the Network for Excellence in Washington Schools, or NEWS.
An alliance of school districts, administrators, teachers and parents, NEWS organized in 2005 and sued two years later.
The coalition and its supporters contend the disparity between what the state delivers and what it costs to educate students in the 21st century -- in the face of increasing academic standards, accountability and expenses -- has broadened.
They want to see the state fund 100 percent of the cost of basic education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The state currently funds about 72 percent of public education, according to the 2009 Citizen's Guide to Washington State K-12 Finance, prepared by the Senate Ways and Means and Senate Early Learning & K-12 committees.
The other major sources are local taxes (16 percent) and federal funds
(9 percent).
The same report says the average spent per student was $9,418 for the 2007-08 school year. Of that, $6,740 came from state funds.
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Selah Superintendent Steve Chestnut and Sunnyside Superintendent Rick Cole were deposed in the McCleary case. Former Yakima superintendent Ben Soria testified at the trial about conditions in the Yakima School District, the largest in Central Washington with about 14,600 students.
Soria testified that Yakima and other districts wouldn't be able to operate without funding from local levies, originally meant for enhancements or enrichment programs.
When Yakima's levy failed twice in 1998, Soria says the effect was devastating. Each time, the district failed to receive the 60 percent supermajority then required for passage. The requirement changed three years ago to a 50 percent simple majority.
Still, in this year's Feb. 9 election, 12 school districts throughout Yakima County passed levies, most of them by more than 60 percent.
In 1978, the state Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's ruling requiring the Legislature to fund basic education, and it deemed unconstitutional the practice of compelling districts to rely on levies.
Today, implementation of Erlick's ruling couldn't come fast enough for Blair, who's retiring from the Chimacum superintendent post this year but plans to stay involved with NEWS.
"The ruling is they're wrong, and they have to fix it," Blair says. "They're breaking the law."
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Meantime, it's school as usual in Chimacum, ground zero for the McCleary case.
District boundaries stretch roughly 110 square miles from the Hood Canal Bridge to the outskirts of Port Townsend. The campus sits across the street from the Grange hall and up the road the Chimacum Café, known for its pies.
Here, the blue-collar, boat-building economy is made up of small-scale manufacturing, maritime businesses, tourism, retail and restaurants. About 41 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price meals. And, according to high school principal Whitney Meissner, "We do a lot of car washes."
"I feel like it's David and Goliath," Pennell, the science teacher, says of her small district leading the charge against the state for what she calls "a long-standing injustice."
The importance of the case isn't lost on students.
"I think Mr. Blair's decision to do this really reflects the attitude of the town," says 18-year-old Chimacum senior Sarah Browning. "I think we really have to work if we want something. We don't just get stuff handed to us."
If 16-year-old Acshi Haggenmiller had his way, Chimacum would have more teachers. Also on his wish list: bio-engineering, Chinese or Japanese, and more Advanced Placement classes.
But the junior doesn't expect to see them anytime soon.
"You have to wait and see how (the case) actually plays out," he says.
Kelsey calls the lawsuit with her mom's name on it an "eye-opening" experience: "It's given me ... a chance to see we should have options for different kinds of learning and different classes."
When the school board voted -- unanimously, in the high school library -- to participate in the case, her mom was there.
"I was very proud," Stephanie McCleary says. "It was a huge leap. I think it was a risk to step out and say we're not being funded and present it in a lawsuit."
Shortly after the vote, the superintendent invited her to get involved.
"He said, 'You should think about joining the lawsuit,' and I said, 'Sure,'" McCleary recalls, stressing how much she believes in the cause.
But she didn't set out to become the face of the case, a position that required her to testify in court and give interviews to the news media.
"I like to be behind the scenes," she says. "It was way out of my comfort zone. It pushed me harder than I've ever been pushed."
Heading to Seattle for the trial, she says, "My hands starting sweating the minute we got across the bridge."
McCleary acknowledges implementation might be too late for her own children.
"I really hope it's not another 30 years and another lawsuit before the Legislature follows through on this," she says. "I hope my grandkids will benefit from this."
* Adriana Janovich can be reached at 509-577-7653 or ajanovich@yakimaherald.com.
Milestones in Washington State Education Funding
• 1976 — The Seattle School District files suit against the state to provide the “ample provision” required by the state Constitution.
• 1977 — Thurston County Superior Court Judge Robert Doran rules in favor of the district. The Basic Education Act of 1977 passes, creating a state education funding formula based on ratios of staff to students. The Levy Lid Act caps revenues from local levies.
• 1978 — The state Supreme Court affirms Doran’s decision, requiring the Legislature to fund basic education as its highest priority through regular and dependable taxes, and ruling unconstitutional the practice of compelling districts to rely on levies, deemed “neither dependable nor regular.” The court decides levies may be used to fund “enrichment programs,” or extras that “go beyond the constitutional mandate.”
• 1983 — Doran expands and clarifies the definition of basic education to include special education, bilingual education, remediation assistance and transportation.
• 1987 — The Local Effort Assistance program, or levy equalization, is created with the intent of leveling the tax burden between districts with low property values and high levy rates and property-rich districts with lower levy rates by providing matching state funds.
• 1993 — Lawmakers pass the Education Reform Act, establishing rigorous, performance-based standards for basic education and requiring high school students to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL, in order to graduate.
• 2000 — Voters approve Initiatives 728 and 732, reducing class sizes and calling for cost-of-living increases for teachers.
• 2001 — The federal No Child Left Behind Act passes, adding more requirements for schools and districts to continue to receive federal dollars.
• 2005 — The Network for Excellence in Washington Schools, or NEWS, forms.
• 2007 — A broad group of parents, organizations, coalitions and school districts files suit against the state, contending it fails to fund basic education.
• 2009 — The trial takes place in King County Superior Court.
• Feb. 4, 2010 — King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick rules the state isn’t fulfilling its constitutional duty to fully pay for basic public education.
• March 25, 2010 — State Attorney General’s Office announces it will appeal Erlick’s ruling.
— Sources: NEWS Web site (www.waschoolexcellence.org), 2009 Citizen’s Guide to Washington State K-12 Finance, prepared by the Senate Ways and Means and Senate Early Learning & K-12 committees
