Advocacy
PTA speaks for every child with one voice. As the largest volunteer child advocacy organization in the nation, we are the conscience of the country for issues affecting children and youth.
📢 Stay Informed with Advocacy Alerts
Easily join efforts to advocate for our kids and our schools by signing up for advocacy alerts from Shoreline PTA Council. You’ll receive action alerts and informational broadcasts that include quick, simple ways to communicate with legislators, as well as other information or updates relevant to advocacy work.
Legislative Advocacy
Shoreline Public Schools has a budget problem. Our district faced significant budget cuts when planning for the 2023-24 school year that deeply impact students and staff. Shoreline School District is still facing a budget emergency for the 2024-25 school year and beyond. Please read further to learn how we got here and what we can do to take action at the state and local levels. Thank you for getting involved and advocating for our students!
For the latest advocacy news and updates, see Shoreline PTA Council’s Advocacy page. If you have questions, ideas, or comments, please reach out to legchair@shorelinepta.org.
District Budget Deficit: How Did We Get Here?
School funding is complex, but a simplified answer is:Â
​Washington State's restructuring of K-12 education funding in 2018 due to the McCleary case, resulted in all school districts having less flexibility and less revenue than under the previous funding structure as a way to address the inequality of levies.
The COVID crisis then gave our schools:Â
1) new crises that drew down reserves
2) new needs, paired with federal funding, which delayed budget cut decisions
Most recently, inflation has driven up school operating costs, which has not been matched by increased state funding.
Shoreline is already at the max of our cap for our local levy funding, so we cannot currently raise more money locally to make up the shortfall between our operating costs and the state funding. Thus, we face budget cuts.
Thank you for reading and for your collaborative advocacy!