Free Republic

I just find this below excerpt suspicious... - - - - - - - - - - Closures on table as Seattle Schools faces bankruptcy By Sanjay Bhatt Seattle Times staff reporter Seattle Public Schools is considering plans to close the equivalent of 12 to 22 schools starting in two years in order to stave off bankruptcy, district officials say. After similar actions by urban districts in California, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis, administrators in Seattle say closing schools would help stabilize the district's financial health and channel scarce resources to teachers and learning, rather than bricks and buses. Seattle hasn't...

No matter how you slice the pie chart, education spending in Washington is up. This runs contrary to claims made by sponsors of Initiative 884 (the billion-dollar education tax increase) that per-pupil spending has fallen behind inflation. In fact, per-pupil spending has increased at nearly double the rate of inflation since 1994. In real dollars, per-pupil spending from the state’s general fund increased by 30.4% between 1994 and 2003, from $5,701.63 to $7,436.15. Adjusted for inflation, this is a 12.7% spending increase.