Aug. 26 Daily News editorial

The Kelso School District has taken some heat on our Web site in recent days for a couple of recent budget choices. News last week that the budget would contain hefty pay increases for school administrators and funding cuts for special eduction prompted a flood of angry, online story comments. Readers would do better to redirect their anger at state and federal lawmakers, whose budget decisions largely mandated the Kelso district’s actions.

Most of the big pay increase for administrators was mandated by a legislative decision during the past session to order 5.1 percent raises for all certified school employees in the state. Kelso’s decision to bring its school administrators’ pay up to that of administrators in like-sized districts came months before state lawmakers mandated that 5.1 percent increase.

The $100,000 cut in the special education budget, which prompted some of the angrier reader comments, also can be viewed as largely dictated by developments and legislative actions outside of the Kelso School District’s control. The expectation of fewer students this year means fewer state dollars. The effect of any decline in state support is significant, given that neither the state nor the federal government has ever adequately funded the mandate for special education.

The state has an artificial cap on funding, which assumes that a school district’s special education program will have no more than 12.7 percent of the district’s total student population. Kelso is projecting that special education students will make up 13.8 percent of the total student population.

The federal government has a worse track record than the state, when it comes to funding the special education mandate. Congress committed more than a decade ago to covering 40 percent of the additional costs of teaching children with special needs. Members of Congress should have fulfilled that 40-percent funding commitment long ago, but the last we saw the federal government was paying a little less than 20 percent of what teaching children with special needs costs local school districts. Moreover, the Kelso School District will receive $32,000 less in federal funding for special education this year than it received the previous year.

Readers may differ on some particulars of the district’s plan to bring this year’s school budget in balance with available revenue. But they should know that the hardest choices Kelso school officials had to make on this year’s budget were largely dictated by unfunded or underfunded obligations handed down from state and federal lawmakers.