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Public education is under pressure.

Parents are on the warpath.

All while the Trump administration is making cuts and the state budget is going the wrong way.

But money isn't always the complete answer.

While spending is up sharply in Washington, student achievement is down.

So tonight we sit down with state Superintendent Chris Reich to talk about the state of the schools as the new academic year begins next week.

Franklin Pierce, superintendent Lance.

Good.

Paster is here talking about how our property poor district is struggling to make it.

And our Steve Kitchens has the story of a community coming together to help.

A local school tried to keep an improvement project going despite the loss of federal funding.

It's back to school 2025 next on northwest.

Now.

Music Every year, Washington state taxpayers invest $20,000 into each student and on average, $135,000 into salaries and benefits for teachers.

Those numbers have shot skyward in the past decade, vastly outpacing inflation, with an annual school budget of about $16 billion.

Despite that, the Casey Foundation reports that we've dropped from 20th in the nation down to 27th when it comes to student performance.

Last year, National Assessment of Education Progress data showed that 68% of fourth graders couldn't meet reading standards, With employers crying for a basic understanding of numbers.

A whopping 71% of eighth graders tested below standard in math.

National center for Education Statistics data shows we now ranked 48th when measuring students going to college, not graduating, just going.

That's just a small sample of what's happening as enrollment, government budgets and family success decline under the weight of legislative and administrative mediocrity.

And social decay.

With about 20% of the state's kids attending schools in high poverty areas.

Despite the grim numbers, Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Ragsdale says that since the end of the pandemic, some of the metrics are improving.

Chris Wright doll.

Thanks so much for coming to northwest now.

And I want to thank you publicly for doing this program every year.

Some years the news isn't that great.

And you show up, rain or shine, good or bad.

And I think that's, to your credit.

I just outlined coming into the segment, some of the negative testing numbers nationally.

That you know, could discourage a little person, a person a little bit if they kind of looked at those numbers over a period of time and see the declines in academic performance.

You, though, say you found some better numbers in the state data, coming out of Covid.

Talk a little bit about that.

How are we really doing help, allay my fears.

Well, I'm not going to lay your fears.

What I'm going to tell you is that we've been looking at data all across the globe.

So there's an international test.

And beginning in 2012, 2013.

So more than a decade reading scores globally are down right.

Reading scores in the United States, for example, are down.

Our state is down.

It preceded the pandemic.

And that's the thing.

I think we're going to try to push people into a harder conversation.

Right.

Our kids are 7.5 hours a day now on screen time.

You multiply that by 365 days a year right there, twice is more likely to be on a screen than in front of a teacher for the first time in American history.

So there's a lot going on.

The encouraging news is we do get a national exam, and by eighth grade there's only four states outperforming our statistically.

Right.

So we're we're right in the top there.

We're really average in math.

So that's an emphasis for us this year.

Mathematics.

Since the pandemic there's been some good recovery in attendance and enrollments and even some test scores that we're starting to see some nice glimmers of hope.

But we have a global problem with kids no longer reading at home, about 10 or 15% less reading at home, replaced by that, and a ton more of screen time.

And and the planet has to come to grips with this.

So you take that that change, in terms of how kids are being raised.

Throw in a ton of social problems, income issues, poverty issues, domestic violence issues, substance abuse issues.

And you have so many kids coming into the public schools who are not ready to learn, who need a meal, who need somebody to talk to.

It's and we look at test scores and, you know, and like I said before, I make no secret of it.

They're discouraging.

But then I think to myself, My God, look at the look at the homes in the in the neighborhoods.

They're coming from it.

Can the public schools remedy that?

Are we are the public schools capable of turning that around?

Well, we don't ask doctors why they haven't cured cancer, right?

We've said to doctors like you should treat patients when they come to you with acute crises, right.

But saturated fats and sugars and sodium and and everything the disease in public health is real.

And we say the doctors please treat it and thank God I have a good doctor or not.

But we do that to teachers.

Why haven't teachers solved all of that?

Well, test scores are always going to reflect your larger society's, you know, opportunity.

So the good news is there's also this truth about kids are going to need different skills going forward.

We're still testing them as if it's 1950, in terms of traditional academic mathematics.

But there's quantitative reasoning.

So in other words, problem solving skills kids have today, we don't put those on the tests.

So as you know, I'm never going to put a lot of emphasis on the standardized test.

What I will say is it tells the trend.

It tells the trend of a society that's not performing well for kids.

But we see some good recovery and we see programing in our schools that really looks forward and not backwards.

And that's why so many more kids are graduating with industry credentials.

They're able to go straight to a technical college, community college, apprenticeship, military.

The outcomes are quite good for kids who can lean into it.

But there's a segment of our population, as you said, under enormous distress.

So here's a completely nonscientific, completely anecdotal story.

There's just my observations.

I tend and, you know, I know I'm an old guy now, but I tend to encounter two types of young people super achievers that I'm thinking to myself, My God, what was I doing in high school?

Holy cow.

And oh my God, they're not going to make it.

I can already tell.

I don't see much of that kind of middle, you know, go to high school, get your degree, do a thing.

I don't see that much.

It's either A or B.

Is that true?

And and what can we do to close that gap?

Well, I think it's a great observation.

I mean, I'm just looking at assessment data and realizing that our highest performing, quintiles are, are achieving, again, like their growth is faster than it was pre-pandemic.

And our kids are really struggling.

They're struggling even more.

So.

It kind of mirrors this American society where we've hollowed out the middle class and you're either financially distressed or you're taking off.

And I'd say that's a pretty good reflection of what's happening in schools.

What's going on.

A little news here.

The Trump administration had threatened to cut hundred and $37 million out of the Department of Education that came back.

So that has to be some good news.

And I also want to throw in state budget here.

There was a big deficit then, got a $9 billion, four year tax hike.

Education did wind up with a bit of an increase.

But is that enough?

Are we meeting our paramount duty?

And how do you look at that as a percentage of the state budget?

Yeah, the number goes up, but the percentage of the spending.

How how's that looking?

And are we meeting that paramount duty?

We are not.

So after the the big court case a decade ago, the legislature did a great job raise the funding up.

Got it to where?

At least the formulas they had in law, they were funding.

Right.

And also happened to push our budget to about 50%, a little more than 50% of the state budget.

We're right back down to 43 or 44% of the state budget.

Although that's not a requirement in law, but it's kind of an indication of where the values and priorities are.

What troubles me the most time is we're now down probably $500 a kid just to inflation from 5 or 6 years ago.

So even though there's nominal dollars being added, we keep shrinking as a share of the budget and against inflation.

Our school districts are saying you got to at least keep up with our cost drivers and they're not doing that.

So I'd say no, the paramount duty isn't being funded and the formulas that we're funded are still not even adequate.

Like we always talk about the one psychologist for 8000 kids in middle school, right.

Like that's that's insane, right?

Yeah.

That's insane.

So just because they finally funded that one psychologist and said, oh, we met our paramount duty doesn't mean it's the system we should have.

So there's two questions is ample based on the courts, I'd say no.

Is it what we actually need moving forward?

Definitely no.

So now we have school districts that can help ameliorate that a little bit by passing additional supplemental levies.

Some districts will have that, some don't.

It seems like we're right back into the thing.

We've always been there, but even more so we talked about the stratification, a zip code.

We are probably going to make it the zip code where you're not, educational outcomes seem still to be determined to be determined by that.

And there's been years of effort made to try to try to moderate that.

Well, first, that's true around the world.

Income associates highly with student achievement.

So we we want to break that down.

Where I'll disagree slightly with you is the legislature did put a lot of money into the system eight years ago.

They disproportionately put that money into higher poverty communities.

And we've seen some decent results from that.

They cut local levy authorities so much that when we talk about them restoring a little bit of it.

Yeah, they restored it.

Yeah.

It's not even close to where it was before.

Okay.

And then they added this element, which is really good called levy equalization.

They put a pile of money on property.

Poor communities who can't who can't take the opportunity of levy.

If those two things move in unison, it's not a terrible system to say if you're in a wealthy community, we need you to step up more.

And if you're in a high poverty community, the state will step up with more.

Those can always kind of be tweaked a little bit, but our legislature did try to keep that in balance.

And I think this session you're going to hear more about that.

How many school districts are in jeopardy of becoming I don't think the terms receivership, but where the state has to come in and say here, we're going to help you do your budget.

You know, the big districts, the, you know, Seattle and Tacoma and they're all facing these budget deficits, apparently.

How dire is that situation?

How many districts are on the edge that you're looking at and saying, guys, we may be we may be stepping in on this one.

How does that stand?

We've got about 7 or 8 that are in what we call officially binding conditions.

They still got control of their own decision making as a local board, but we're now monitoring their finances and they're on the road to us having a lot more decision making over their finances.

Thankfully, this state doesn't do state takeovers.

We shouldn't do that.

But there's 7 or 8 that are in real dire straits.

I'd say there's probably another ten that quite honestly, had the federal government cut those federal dollars and those districts would have been immediately in crisis.

So it was not a small thing that it was a bipartisan effort for the feds to restore those federal funds.

Doesn't mean they're going to do it next year.

So we're still watching that.

But but put the number it say 17 or 18 districts that are, really distressed, 7 or 8 that have already triggered our financial influence.

The big three in the state budget special ed got 150 million bucks, need 550 supplies and operating costs, got 80 million transportation, though, got nothing.

Talk a little bit about the the jeopardy that put some students in particularly again, the students who are at risk of poverty.

They can't get transportation now back into their home school.

They may be sleeping on a couch somewhere.

So they got to go to that school instead of back to the teacher.

They know.

That seems like another way to drive down test scores.

Well, we've got 4% of our population of students who are considered homeless.

They're experiencing homelessness.

There's federal law that says you need to keep them in the environment that makes them most academically successful.

So we do bus kids up and down, particularly I-5.

Yeah.

To keep them in their home districts.

The challenge for our school districts is they'll follow the law.

They're going to carve out their budgets in other places to make sure that happens.

But what did they cut in order to make that happen?

So transportation continues to be a challenge.

I hate to say this, but when the federal government passes laws, they should fund their laws.

Now.

They won't all the time.

So our state steps.

Yeah, but this is truly one of those environments where the feds and the state need to do something.

You mentioned tax increases in our state.

8 or $9 billion over four years is $2.5 billion a year.

It is a fraction of what the Trump administration just cut taxes for the wealthiest.

And in Washington state, we're going to benefit to the tune of seven or 8 or $9 billion a year in tax relief on the federal side.

But then people kind of lose their minds that we asked for any new revenue to try to fund schools or human services on the state side.

But the net benefit is that low income and middle income families are going to keep struggling with our tax code.

And the very wealthy just got an unbelievable deal.

So we better come to grips with the tax code while we talk about spending as well.

Chris.

Right.

Dale, thanks so much for coming in northwest style.

Yeah.

Thank you.

The community around a Tacoma school is trying to keep a playground renovation going, despite the loss of $1 million of federal funding.

As Steve Higgins tells us, the EPA cut funding because of concerns about the project's so-called woke environmental justice agenda.

On a warm, fun filled late summer evening.

Jacob, watching his daughter hang out at a small park near their Tacoma home, is quiet.

Not all crazy like you know.

Most neighborhoods are the playground, and Horace Mann Elementary has been revitalized with new equipment, walking baths, field irrigation, and more.

You see all concrete busted up concrete holes in the concrete.

It's crazy.

It looks a lot better for sure.

The improvements are part of a pilot project collaboration between Tacoma Public Schools, Parks Tacoma and Trust for Public Land.

The project upgrades recess beyond school hours, transforming play spaces into community schoolyards.

High quality public parks open to the public after normal school hours and during weekends.

It's never like this before us now.

It was always locked, but now it's open.

So my kids wanted to go play right down the street.

Convenient.

Close.

Matt Elementary is one of five Tacoma schools chosen for similar upgrades in the project.

Playgrounds at Whitman, Jenny Reid and Stafford elementary schools received new amenities, landscaping, and more.

But in May 2025, the Trump administration terminated a $1 million grant intended for a community school yard at Larchmont Elementary.

I'm I'm not gonna lie.

I went and cried on my back porch, for a minute, and then I regrouped and stuff like this personally makes me more tenacious.

South End Neighborhood Council Chair Andrea Hogue said learning about the revocation of federal funds felt like a punch to the gut.

The council also lost funding for events and programing at the school yard, but by the end of July, the partnered agencies all ponied up more money to complete the school yard at Larchmont, scheduled to be complete by spring 2026.

Hogue says the setback is a teachable moment for students who shared input during the design phase.

We still came together and to not let bad things shut you down.

To not have them make it.

You need to dream bigger.

This happened.

Dream bigger.

And then it alleges a community school yard down the block.

He supports future similar projects and appreciates the investment.

I think it's good for the kids.

Definitely, because they can go play and keeping stay outside instead of being on the phones and on tablets and stuff.

In Tacoma, Steve Higgins, North West now.

Joining us now is returning guest and superintendent of schools in the Franklin Pierce School District.

Lance good, pastor.

Lance, thanks so much for coming to northwest now.

Good to have you here from the Franklin Pierce school District.

Let's start a little bit with just general budget issues.

I keep hearing that urban districts are in budget trouble.

They're coming up lots, lots of dollars short.

How is Franklin Pierce doing, generally speaking, on your budget?

Yeah.

Not good.

It's, It's an ongoing challenge.

It has been now for the past handful of years.

I think last spring was the third year in a row where we had to make fairly sizable reductions, in order to just balance our budget, by the razor's edge, right, with very little fund balance.

It's it's been increasingly difficult.

How has that changed the job?

Yeah.

That's.

It feels like that's what the job is.

Looking at our system, our programs, and analyzing and determining what can we do without and still support our students and children and give them everything they they need and deserve.

What does staff have to say about that?

Have you had some meetings with them?

Yeah.

It's frustrating.

We had to reduce, at our, in our music department at the high school level last fall.

And that's.

I have a daughter who's a music teacher.

That's the last thing that I want to do.

And it hurt.

The community felt it, and the staff felt it.

And the students, I spoke to all of those folks, and it's hard to, It's hard to justify.

It's always hard in a job when you, for some circumstance, you know, whether you lose school budget funding or or PBS funding, you know, to go from, hey, we're we're incrementally building, here's some cool new stuff we can do to what can we keep?

Yep.

How do we now we're playing defense.

I hate that.

I hate it, too.

It it's not.

It hasn't been fun.

And we're as, educators and then leaders in the in the system, it's not really what we're accustomed to doing.

Right?

We want to be, optimistic and leaders for future.

And what's better and what's possible.

And this feels like kind of the opposite, right?

If I'm not mistaken, Franklin Pierce typically is kind of viewed as a high poverty district.

Title one money from the feds coming in to help that.

What is going on with federal dollars with title one?

Connect some of those dots for me.

I know it peripherally, but help me out there.

Yeah, that's I mentioned that the last three years having to go through pretty significant challenges.

Next year is not going to be any different because we know significant cuts to not all of the title programs are coming.

There was a real scare this summer when the feds decided to pull back and hold on to dollars that had already been allocated for this coming school year.

They said they were analyzing the the need of those dollars.

So they finally I don't in my mind came to their senses and released the dollars.

But I think we got a sense for what's to come.

What kind of programs are those?

Title one programs.

Really leading and supporting, interventions for reading and math.

Yes, but also, multilingual language learners.

Students experiencing homelessness.

There's programs for that.

So, any kind of intervention that we provide, much of those dollars come from the federal government that lands directly on high risk kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is the majority of our school district.

Yeah.

Depending on how you wanted to define high risk students.

Right.

You mentioned our poverty rate.

It's extremely high.

We're one of the most diverse school districts in the nation.

Frankly, over 45 languages spoken.

We have, people coming from all over the world.

Which is the beauty of our district.

And with it, often flows federal assistance, federal dollars.

But those dollars are being, scrutinized heavily, and we know that they're going to be reduced significantly.

We've talked in the past.

All districts, all school children are kind of undergoing a pretty good bump in mental health, issues right now.

That's just been across the board here.

Holding Hope is one of the programs.

I'm not sure how that fits in, but, really impacting if programs like that are lost.

It really impacts a child's readiness to learn when you get them, right?

Yeah, it's about where we we didn't have the same grant funding for that specific program that Tacoma had, so we didn't we're not seeing that lost because we didn't ever have it.

What we're seeing, though, is a loss of, early childhood slots.

We have we're able to serve fewer students now, and our part of the Pierce County is really a childcare desert.

There's a lack of quality child childcare in the area, and now we're able to serve fewer students.

We are increasing our partnerships with with community organizations like, Pierce County Kids Mental Health, to provide an attempt to provide those services to students.

But there's still a great need.

School resource officers, another cut talked a little bit about that.

Yeah.

We we the state provides based on, the, the basic head formula.

We receive about $75,000 for safety and security.

From the state.

The rest of it comes from local levy dollars.

Those local, local levy dollars now are being used to fund the gaps in special education.

Yeah, transportation supplies and operating costs.

And so we had to make a difficult decision to reduce, security officers, school resource officers this year.

We, through our budget process, determined we needed to go from 2 to 1, and, sheriff's department couldn't support one.

So we just we met last week and came to the conclusion to, terminate that contract.

We're entering into another contract with the sheriff's department.

We we have a great relationship.

It's ongoing.

They're going to continue to support schools, but, not in that way.

And that's that's, a direct, one of the direct impacts of having, a not not a fully funded education.

Yeah.

And it's frustrating.

Seattle schools did an enrollment study some time ago shows that, you know, a lot of high performing students are fleeing watered down curriculums.

It's not the cost of housing.

It's it's school performance, killing the advanced track.

Over the course of three years, a lot of white Asian kids are fleeing.

And of course, those kids can afford to do that in Seattle.

Not all of them, but a lot of them had they have that upward mobility.

Not the case in Franklin Pierce.

So what are you seeing with enrollment?

Is your enrollment because of that holding steady?

Maybe that's kind of a in a strange way, a good thing.

Or do you see enrollment being declining in your formula?

What are you seeing?

Our our enrollment is declining.

Some of it is a lower birth rate in the county.

We've had three years in a row now of low kindergarten enrollment, lower than what we traditionally have had.

So we're seeing it there, and we are seeing it at the, secondary level as well.

More and more students choosing to participate in running Start, which is a good thing.

Yeah.

But the funding then follows the students and so we lose.

That was one of the impacts for our decision to have to reduce our music program slightly is because more and more students are leaving our high schools for those opportunities.

And yes, the more students are participating in online opportunities and, looking and there's, we want there to be a variety of, of options for kids.

Yeah.

Is are you kind of getting are the, are the high achieving, high income kids leaving and you're kind of getting leaving behind a lot of the at risk kids.

Is that kind of what's happening?

I don't think we see that in our district.

Just to the extent that we're when we talk about high poverty and I mean, that's that's really the high percentage.

So overwhelming.

Right.

Yeah.

So I'm not saying that that's not happening in, in places around the region, but it's not a big factor for you.

Yeah.

So I'm going to speak a little heresy here.

And talk a little bit about the disparities between rich and poor districts and, you know, success by zip code.

There has been some equal, you know, equalization is a thing.

There's some of the formula.

It's been improved a little bit.

Is it enough?

Do you see a time when we just go to full on equalization?

I mean, you you take the money, put it in a pot and split it between school districts.

I mean, what's what's needed here?

Well, there needs to be.

The formula needs to take into account the the poverty levels of school districts.

And and because it does take more and it takes additional.

The, the the changes to the levy, the level equalization in laws this year are, are going to be damaging, I think, in the long run, where the, school districts like Bellevue and Seattle are able to lift their lid and raise, well, they can vote in a levy.

You're not going to get that to pass.

It's not going to be very difficult.

Yeah.

And we have to run a levy this year.

In January or February.

And it's going to be hard to message that because, our, our community is already paying the second highest rate in Pierce County.

Yeah.

And ask, the poorest, community in Pierce County to pay even more in order to receive the same level of funding that other districts receive, is is unfair, it's inequitable and needs to change.

For the last 30s you're talking to the state legislature, get them.

Yeah, that that's the message it needs to change.

I know there's a workgroup right now looking at, really revamping the entire system.

But it it's going to take courage and it's going to take an appetite to make the change necessary.

And, come visit our schools will walk through, like, and show you some of the things that are now missing because of the reductions we've had to make the last three years.

Yeah.

Okay, well, Lance, I know you're going from a glass half full thing to a glass half empty thing.

You talked a little bit about that before we taped this, but I wish you the best of luck in the upcoming school year.

Thank you.

And a half glass full, still exists because our kids are awesome.

Our teachers are awesome.

They're great things happening in our schools.

But the funding is an issue.

Yeah.

Appreciate being here, Tom.

I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to.

To share.

Yep.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Nobody should be surprised to hear that the big call from the education establishment is for more money.

That will never change.

Yes, there is maybe more room for a little more spending as a percentage of the state budget, but we've got a structural problem with spending out raising revenue.

A $9 billion tax hike was the only thing preventing drastic cuts, and there's no way that that can continue.

High achieving students are fleeing, and for now, wealthy districts can use supplemental levies to tax their way out of budget squeezes, all while serving fewer at risk students.

The bottom line as usual, it's the low income students and low income districts who are increasingly at risk, and that shows no sign of changing, promising to only amplify growing wealth and achievement gaps.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web@kttc.org.

Stream it through the PBS app or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now, until next time, I'm Tom Layson Thanks for watching.

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