Families and Education Levy 2004
Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Families and Education Levy?

It is a City of Seattle initiative on the September 2004 primary ballot that was proposed by the Seattle City Council. It would raise $116.8 million from Seattle property owners over 7 years in order to pay for a smorgasbord of social service programs generally serving public school children.

What is the history of the Families and Education Levy?

The first Families and Education Levy was approved in 1990 for $69 million over 7 years. The $69 million levy was renewed in 1997. The current proposal for $116.8 million is a 69% increase over the expiring levy.

How much will the levy cost property owners?

The $116.8 million will be collected over 7 years (2005 - 2011) as an increment to property taxes. It would add about $0.19 per $1,000 of the current assessed value to a property owner's tax bill each year. For example, for a home currently assessed at $300,000, the owner would pay about $400 over the lifetime of the levy. An $800,000 home would be charged about $1,000 extra. Of course it's not just homeowners who pay for the levy. Landlords would simply raise rents and pass the tax increase along to their tenants, so renters and small business owners would end up paying more too.

The last two family levies spent $138 million over 14 years. What was all that money spent on?

The City has not done a very good job of explaining to the public how this money has been used over the years and what this spending has accomplished. There's a "Families and Education Levy Progress Report 2003" on the web here. It lists the programs that were funded in 2002 - 2003. We asked the Mayor's office for reports on all programs that have been funded since 1990. The information we received appears to be incomplete.

Among the funded programs that we know about:

• Childcare programs
• After-school activities programs
• School-based health centers and school nurses
• Family support programs

What have these programs accomplished?

The levy initiative explicitly states that its goal is to "support student academic achievement". We looked at all of the program evaluation reports that the Mayor's office made available to us. Very few of these reports show any evidence that the programs contributed to academic achievement. Among the various programs and their touted accomplishments, we found:

FAMILY SUPPORT CENTERS

This sounds very nice, but it's hardly an indication of an improvement in academic achievement. And does it really cost $790,000 in taxpayer funds for families to have a storytime?

Another program called the IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE FAMILY SUPPORT PROJECT has as one of its goals:

To help children of immigrants learn about their native language and culture through community forums and youth education classes.

If children of immigrants are having difficulty at school because their home language isn't English, it would seem that the best investment of community resources would be for assistance with learning English, not with learning their home language which they're already speaking at home. There is no indication that children served by this program showed any improvement in their achievement at school.

One program called "Project Achieve" showed that the students who participated in the program demonstrated a decline in attendance and grades and a higher drop-out rate after they participated in "Project Achieve". In fact, the "Project Achieve" students seemed to do worse than a group of students from similar backgrounds who did not participate in "Project Achieve".

The "SEATTLE YOUTH INVOLVEMENT NETWORK" offered this activity:

Community Action Camp trains young people to be social activists during a three-week summer camp for 10 to 14 high school students. Later, participants take part in a week-long internship at a local community-based organization.

That could mean almost anything. But there's no indication that the summer camp participants did any better in school.

Did any of the funded programs show contributions to academic achievement?

Yes, some of them did.

The "SEATTLE TEAM FOR YOUTH" showed for its participants that:

There is significant positive change for attendance, GPA, school discipline referrals, school suspensions, felony referrals, total referrals, severity of referrals, convictions, and admissions to detention.

Teachers who were trained by the "K-12 LITERACY INITIATIVE" appeared to show increased success in improving reading test scores of their students.

The "City Levy Redirect Program", which lowered class sizes in some schools showed that

The above three programs are the only evidence we found of improvements in academic achievement out of 25 programs, $138 million and 14 years.

The proposed levy is a 69% increase over the expiring levy. What is the justification for increasing the tax by 69%?

The main justification seems to be the City Council's desire to raise more taxes and spend more money. Even after adjusting for inflation, it's still a 44% tax increase. But this makes little sense for two reasons

1. The prior levy programs haven't been very successful at meeting their objectives
2. There are fewer students in the public schools now than there were 7 years ago.

In fact, as this table shows, the numbers of students considered to be "at risk" -- non-whites, low income and limited English -- have declined even more than the student body as a whole. The number of elementary students, an indication of future enrollment, has also declined.

	1997	present	Change
Levy amount	$69 million	$116.8 million	+69%
Consumer Price Index (Seattle)	165.0	194.3	+17.8%
Levy amount adjusted for inflation	$69 million	$99.1 million	+43.6%
Enrollment in Seattle Public Schools	47,457	46,730	-1.5%
Number of Students eligible for Free/Reduced Lunch	20,009	18,323	-8.4%
Number of Limited English students	6,203	6,010	-3.1%
Number of non-white students	28,186	27,230	-2.0%
Number of elementary school students	23,737	22,115	-6.8%

(source: Seattle School District Data Profile 2003)

It doesn't seem either fair or wise to make a huge increase in spending on an unsuccessful program when its target population is getting smaller.

What would the money from the new levy be spent on?

It's difficult to say. The levy promoters offer a list of proposed items, but the text of the initiative text clearly states that these are only examples. In fact, the initiative gives the City Council a blank check to spend $116.8 million on anything it wants.

But who reads the full text of the initiative. Can't we just trust the levy campaign promises made by the Mayor and the City Council?

No. The Washington State Supreme Court recently ruled in the Sound Transit decision that when the voters approve a ballot measure they're approving the literal text of the initiative. Before you vote for the levy, make sure you read and understand every word of the initiative text (here), and know what the initiative guarantees and what it doesn't guarantee. In this case, the only thing it guarantees is to raise taxes by $116.8 million. It doesn't give any guarantees that the money will be well spent. Unless you read, understand and agree with every single word in the initiative text, you should vote NO.

The Mayor and City Council promise "improved accountability". Will we get that?

That's too open-ended to do anything to ensure that the money will be properly spent. Since previous levies are our guide to the new levy, we have to assume that "measurable outcome" will include statistics such as the number of children who participate in the program, not whether they actually show improvements in academic achievement.

The initiative also promises an "Oversight Committee" consisting of 12 people appointed by the Mayor and City Council. Note that this committee can specifically include employees of the agencies that receive levy funds. [Section 6] It's fair to assume that these committee members will vote to approve each others' funding requests.

The promise of "improved accountability" is an admission that for the last 14 years of Families and Education Levies, the accountability has been lousy with equally lousy results. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the accountability or the results will be any better in the next 7 years.

The Levy is on the September primary ballot. Will there be another chance to vote on it in the general election?

No. The measure will be decided in the primary. The only chance to vote NO is on September 14.

Who is opposing the Families and Education Levy? Are they against families and education?

The levy is opposed by ordinary citizens who are for families and support the goal of improving educational opportunities for all of Seattle's schoolchildren. The levy's promoters claim that the levy is "for families", but there's nothing pro-family about a huge tax increase that punishes working families but doesn't deliver much in the way of benefits for the children it claims to help.

What should the community for its public school students instead of passing this levy?

A number of the programs that have been funded by the Families and Education Levy have not accomplished very much and should no longer receive public tax dollars. Some of the programs should be funded out of the Seattle School District's $444 million budget. There is also a place for programs that have a proven track record of making meaningful improvements in academic achievement. We encourage the Mayor and City Council to draft a new proposal that ensures that all of the money would be spent on improving academic achievement.