Supremes hand districts a loss on school construction

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The Wahkiakum School District got a cold shoulder Thursday from the Washington State Supreme Court in its bid shift the bill for schoolhouse construction to the state.

First, some context: The Wahkiakum School District, a tiny¹ district in the southwest corner of the state, filed a lawsuit against the state in 2021 on the basis that its ramshackle schoolhouses are beyond its means to repair and lawmakers in Olympia should pick up the tab.

Here’s why you should care about this: School construction mostly gets paid for by bonds backed by local property taxes. The bonds need 60 percent approval at the ballot box and cash-poor voters are often a hard nope on the tax bite, leaving poorer districts with vastly inferior infrastructure.