Tuition agreements OK'd between school districts

School board members Monday night accepted new “tuition agreements” between districts that have already been doing for decades what the new contracts will make legal, in the eyes of federal regulators.

Grand Coulee Dam School District directors voted to OK the so-called “tuition” pacts with Nespelem and Keller school districts, whose students eventually attend junior high and high school in Coulee Dam, bringing with them federal “Impact Aid” funds to help pay for it.

Because those schools get paid at a higher rate than the Coulee Dam district, they arranged decades ago to send the money with the students.

Earlier this year, a regulator said that memorandum of understanding was insufficient. The districts got this workaround in place to cover the last three years. A similar agreement now has to be worked out for future years.

The agreements make legal the flow of about $10,000 per student, totaling around $800,000 a year, which would have been cut by 60 percent if the workaround had not been found.

In other business, the GCDSD board learned of the possibility it would be asked to help fund a lawsuit against the state, alleging Washington does not live up to its fiscal obligations to pay for school facilities in rural areas.

Superintendent Paul Turner said the Wakiahkum district’s argument is a similar to one that resulted in the McCleary Decision by the state supreme court several years ago that upended state basic education funding.