On the Seattle Children's Levy

Seattle is running a new levy to pay for services in the schools: remedial programs, intervention programs, early learning programs, etc. Spokane has a similar version on the ballot, too.

I wish them both well. The struggle that I have with levies like these, though, is that they're designed to circumvent the current 28% levy lid that school districts are allowed to ask for. By having these additional levies run by outside groups you can pour that much more additional money into the schools, which is great for those schools but only makes the disparity between the very richest and the very poorest that much greater.

If levy equalization goes away this session you'll see that chasm get even wider as property-poor districts lose one of their major funding sources while property-rich districts move along with their lifted lids and supplemental levies.

Education is a resource game.