Blair was the first superintendent to take
the stand. “My job,” he says, “was to lay
down the groundwork in terms of funding:
how Chimacum spends $10 million and the
state gives us $6 million, and the other $4
million is a gap that’s made up by levy and
this and that.” Such as fundraisers, athletic
fees and federal dollars.
“I said, ‘If you want to, Judge, come to
Chimacum. We’re no Taj Mahal out there.
This is basic stuff. To run a district with a
thousand kids, you’re putting 25 to 30 kids
in a classroom. You’ve got a few secretaries,
and a few custodians, and no money for
maintenance, no money for technology, no
money for textbooks.’ I said, ‘If the levy wasn’t in
there, we’d really be suffering.’ And he’s looking
at it and going, ‘ What would you do if you only
had the $6 million that the state gave you?’
“The fact that we’re spending $10 million,
and still failing our kids, and the state’s
only giving us $6 million, I think that really
resonated with Judge Erlick.”
It did. “State funding is not ample, it is not
stable, and it is not dependable,” Judge Erlick
declared in his ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.
Two years later, the Washington Supreme
Court backed him up. More, it retained
jurisdiction over the case. This case has been
won before, in Seattle School District No. 1 v.
State (1978), but that Supreme Court trusted
the Legislature to comply with its ruling. It
didn’t. This one means to keep tabs. “This
court cannot idly stand by as the Legislature
makes unfulfilled promises for reform,” read
part of its 80-page ruling.
Stephanie McCleary, says Ahearne, “was
13 years old when that 1978 Supreme Court
decision came down. Her daughter was
13 years old when we filed this lawsuit. An
entire generation had passed, and the state
had done tons of studies and made a bunch
of promises, but hadn’t done anything
to comply with the constitution. ... Her
daughter is now a senior in high school, so
she’s not going to benefit at all from this.”
Is anyone? That’s the key question now.
“Our Supreme Court has ordered our
Legislature to do something that’s hard, very
hard, with their public schools, and we’ll see
if they do it promptly or if they drag their feet
and stall,” Ahearne says. He smiles but his
eyes remain combative. “I have a good guess
as to what they’re going to do.”
