While he said it off the cuff, Marysville School District school board member and legislative representative Pete Lundberg was right. The Boeing Co. should not be treated with any more importance than our schoolchildren. As important as Boeing is to this state and the world, it is no more important than the education of our children.
If our children don’t learn, there will be no advances of society in the future. Boeing is a power now and has been for years and hopefully will be for many more. But some day some other mode of transportation will be discovered to take the place of planes. Maybe one of our children will be the inventor. That won’t happen without advances in society. And that won’t happen without top-notch schools.
Our schools system has been underfunded for decades. Our students fall behind even school systems in other countries that have less money. If we are going to be the world power we should be because of our wealth, we have to fund education.
The state Supreme Court is pushing us that direction with its decision in State vs. McCleary. That school district sued the state because it wasn’t funding basic education. The court agreed: The state needs to fund education.
So the state legislature will be tasked with coming up with ways to do that. It will be working with school board members statewide, such as Lundberg, to set priorities in spending.
Everyone seems to have ideas on how to improve the educational system. It is better pay for teachers? Is it smaller class sizes? Is it year-round school? Is it charter schools?
The answer probably is a little bit of all of that. But the only way any of that will happen is with more money. Yes, that will have to mean higher taxes, along with different priorities in spending. But at Lundberg says, if Boeing deserves a billions-dollar bailout, so does our education system.
