WA education analyst: Parents should get $3,000 from schools while closed

If parents find themselves shouldering a great deal of the teaching during the upcoming school year, should they get some sort of voucher to offset the financial burden of doing so?

Liv Finne is the Director of the Center for Education at the Washington Policy Center and joined the Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio to discuss why parents should get a $3,000 voucher during remote learning.

“There’s a lot of conflict and strife over this question. But a lot of parents are unhappy and demanding that schools reopen because they cannot manage an extension of what happened at the end of last year. They cannot manage to teach their children themselves, which is what the schools are expecting,” she said.

“You’re seeing the schools put up schedules of remote distance learning that require parents to supervise and deliver to children. And this is not fair to working parents. It’s not fair to the public that is paying $17 billion a year to maintain the school.”

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Finne says if parents are going to have to undertake much of the teaching under the remote learning plan, then money should be returned.

“We’re not arguing for schools to reopen just to be clear, because this is an issue that is mired in health, and that is not in our bailiwick. What we’re observing is that parents are being expected to do the work of teaching their students, and for that we think that some of this money should be returned to parents, because parents are shouldering the burden, and it’s not fair that the system hold onto all the resources and not give some of them over to parents to help them,” she said.

Finne proposes that the state should provide parents with $3,000 education vouchers for each child if the parents have to assume the responsibility of educating their kids.

“Then the parent can use that money however best they decide to meet the education needs of their child. It may be that getting a (physical education) coach is the most important thing for a child in particular, or music or art. Whatever the parents seem to think is going to move the child along his path of getting educated … getting technology, buying tutoring services, paying private school tuition,” she said.

“It’s only 15% of what Seattle public schools spend on children. Seattle public schools spend $20,000 per student.”

Should other taxpayers get a partial refund as well?

As Dori suggested, the only issue he has with such a proposal is wondering why other taxpayers paying for schools aren’t getting a partial refund as well, since schools being closed means schools have reduced transportation costs, fewer school resource officers, and many other employees that taxpayers are paying for year-round which are not as necessary in a virtual school system.

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“So if we’re paying for a Cadillac education at $20,000 per kid per year and we’re getting a Ford Pinto in reality, why shouldn’t we get our money back as well as taxpayers, since we’re not getting what we’re paying for?” Dori asked.

“I agree with that,” Finne said. “When the pandemic struck, I got a rebate from my car insurance company because they knew that I wasn’t gonna be driving my car to work every day. It’s the same principle … We are putting off another year of learning for the education of children–this is going to set them behind.”

“There are 1.2 million children in Washington state between the kindergarten and 12th grade, and all of them are now facing real questions about whether they’re going to get the full 13 years the taxpayers pay for. I don’t think they’re going to, and this is going to mean reduced capacity for earning in their futures. And so we need to do something. We can’t just shrug our shoulders and say that it doesn’t matter.”

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.