Budget negotiations in Olympia have been unprecedentedly long this legislative session, and although they’re not yet completed, local officials are hailing at least one victory written into the budget for rural schools.
Spearheaded by Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, the state will no longer deduct basic education dollars from school districts that receive federal timber money. The move affects roughly 200 rural school districts around the state and could return up to $1 million to schools in Lewis County alone.
“John picked up the ball and ran with it,” said Centralia School Board member and longtime advocate for the change Neal Kirby. “I feel really good about the way it ended up.”
According to an op-ed Kirby wrote to the Seattle Times in 2014, “Centralia School District received $322,000 in timber money in 2013. The state then deducted $322,000 in state education funds from the district in lieu of the timber dollars.”
Timber money is a federal allocation given to school districts near national parks or national forests to offset tax money they might otherwise receive if the lands were taxable and for lost economic activity.
The funds were originally created in the early 1900s by then President Theodore Roosevelt after the creation of the national park system, but similar funds, called federal impact aid, also go to school districts around military bases, reservations and dams.
When timber harvesting in national forests declined due to environmental impacts, rural school districts also took a hit, but the federal government attempted to offset the blow by creating the Secure Rural Schools Act.
Federal law prohibited state governments from deducting education funds from areas that receive federal impact aid but not timber money. During the 2015 reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools Act, lawmakers from timber states, including Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, tried unsuccessfully to prohibit the state level deductions.
For the last 33 years the state has deducted basic education funds from rural school districts on a dollar for dollar basis against the timber money they received from the federal government. Lawmakers at that time believed the state would adequately fund education across the board, and, as a result, school districts wouldn’t have to rely as heavily on levies. That never happened.
School districts around the state still rely heavily on levies, but districts in poor communities suffer because they can’t leverage as much money out their residents.
“Timber money helps balance it out,” Braun said. “We argued it’s unfair way to do this and we were able to get full amount in the budget.”
However, the changes were made as part of the state budget so they will only last through the current biennium. Lawmakers could only go off of the federal budget because there’s no federal budget past that.
“Once you win the way we won this time in the budget you tend to see these practices repeated,” Braun said. “The next step is to make a statutory change which would require a bill.”
Last year lawmakers eased the impact on timber money receiving school districts by passing a law that allowed districts with over a 57 percent poverty rate to get partial funding not to exceed $70,000.
