Letter to the editor: Yelm’s school crisis started long before the levy

Letter to the editor: Yelm’s school crisis started long before the levy

The conversation about Yelm Community Schools keeps stopping at the levy. But the levy is not where this story starts.It’s a snowball. When Congress passed the federal special education law in 1975, it promised to pay 40% of the extra cost; it now pays less than 13%. Washington’s constitution makes basic education the state’s “paramount duty,” yet the state has long left districts paying basic costs with levy dollars. When our levy went away, th…