PORT ANGELES — Giving public school students the resources they need to excel is essential to the state’s continued presence as a prominent member of the world economy, Gov. Jay Inslee said the day before the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seattle.
Xi is expected to arrive in Seattle today to begin his first state visit of the United States, which will conclude next Monday after a speech at the United Nations building in New York City.
“We are in a world economy,” Inslee said during a tour of Stevens Middle School on Monday afternoon.
“Every time I travel around the world I understand our kids are competing with some very smart kids . . . and they are in a competitive environment. We’ve got to give them a chance to compete.”
China is Washington’s top trade partner, with more than $20.6 billion exported there in 2014, Inslee has said — a 24 percent increase over 2013 and more than any other state.
Trade with China supports tens of thousands of jobs in the state, including aerospace machinists and computer engineers, careers paths for which a good primary education is key, he said.
“You’ve got to have engineers,” he said. “You’ve got to have mathematicians. You’ve got to have high-tech manufacturing people.”
And “that all takes advanced scientific information, math information,” he said. “That doesn’t happen by accident.”
One way to improve success rates is to ensure public schools receive adequate funding, he said.
Currently, “we have some real challenges financing the next level of improvement [within] our schools,” he said.
“Right now our schools are too dependent on local levies, on the local decision makers. We need to have the state pick up more of the load.”
The state Supreme Court ruled in the 2012 McCleary decision that lawmakers were not meeting their constitutional responsibility to fully pay for basic K-12 education and were relying too much on local tax-levy dollars to balance the education budget.
The court has found the state in contempt of its ruling in the McCleary decision and has fined it $100,000 a day in sanctions.
As a result of the ruling, $1.3 billion was earmarked in the state budget by legislators for K-12 education.
A total of $3 billion will be needed altogether to comply with the ruling, Inslee said.
