At the Federal Way School Board meeting on Feb. 23, I spoke to the board about the McCleary decision that required the legislature to fully fund K-12 education, and I want to share my message with the community.

Board member and Legislative Chair Liz Drake said at a board meeting last month that the legislature would not address this issue until 2017 because it was an election year. This confirmed an earlier Mirror article that said the same thing.

This issue has now dragged on for three or four years. Last year, the Washington Supreme Court held the legislature in contempt of court and fined them $100,000 a day for not fully addressing this issue during the 2015 legislative session. As of Feb. 23, the fine stands at $19 million. In addition, last year a group of legislators, led by Sens. Bruce Dammeier of Puyallup and Christine Rolfes of Bainbridge Island held seven “listening meetings” across the state. I attended the one in Renton along with Superintendent Dr. Tammy Campbell, Board President Geoffery McAnalloy, VP Claire Wilson, Board Member Liz Drake and Assistant Superintendent Sally McLean. McAnalloy was one of seven speakers who led off the testimony. Both McLean and I also testified before the committee along with about 60 others for over three hours. In addition, I wrote an article that was published in the Mirror where I reported that many of these speakers gave the legislators numerous ideas on how to find additional funding sources. After all this testimony, the final and most important message they delivered was, “Whatever you do, do it now and make it fair!”

Unfortunately, they didn’t get the message. And needless to say, I am extremely disappointed at the legislature’s continued failure to address this very important decision and to ignore the Supreme Court’s contempt of court ruling. I will be more blunt: Using the election and getting re-elected as a reason for not addressing the McCleary decision is the worst excuse I have ever heard! Now we sit and wait for… how long, no one knows.

I leave you with two $64,000 questions: (1) If legislators aren’t willing to do the job they were elected to do, why did they run for office in the first place? (2) Why did that “listening committee” go to all the trouble to hold those seven meetings if they weren’t going to take the testimony seriously and act accordingly? Being the proactive individual that I am, I emailed both Sens. Dammeier and Rolfes and asked them both that very question and, to no one’s surprise, I got no answer.

In the end, Dr. Campbell and I agree that the real losers are the school districts – especially the students – and that is just not fair.

Gary Robertson, Federal Way