1.13.16

Suggested lead:   A schoolteacher-turned-lawmaker in Olympia says full funding for Washington schools is in the process of becoming a reality, at last.  Dan Frizzell has that story.

Wrap (:70 total):   The Legislature's long effort to catch up on its constitutionally mandated school funding is headed for success, according to a lawmaker who knows more than a little bit about the issue. Chris Reykdal (RAKE-dahl), a Democratic state representative from Tumwater, is a former classroom teacher and school-board member who now serves as vice chair of the House Education Committee.  He says the billions of new dollars lawmakers have invested in K-12 schools over the last few years, combined with sweeping reforms, has them poised to make the final push in time for the deadline they wrote into law in 2009.

REYKDAL:  "We're on track to fully fund basic education, based on the laws we've written and based on what the court has as an expectation of us.  It's going to be difficult, and it will require a lot of bipartisanship, but we are on track.  Next year we can simply focus on the solution of paying for it, because all of that bipartisan framework and reform will be in place." [:19]. 

Reykdal acknowledges that what he calls simply focusing on the solution of paying for it is not so simple at all, but says there's really no option.  The timeline established six years ago says the job has to be finished by 2018 . . . and that's right around the corner.  In Olympia, I’m Dan Frizzell.