School Equalization Measure: Showalter Bill
1933

Background:

Under the provisions of the “Barefoot Schoolboy Act of 1895” and its subsequent revisions, the state had begun to accept some financial responsibility for the support of common schools. Still, with increasing enrollments and longer school years, the need for funding was urgent and various measures were explored.

Noah Showalter, who in the early 1920s was president of the Cheney Normal School and a state leader in the reform of rural schools, was involved in finding a solution to the continued disparity of support for poorer rural districts and the under-funding of schools statewide. In 1920, he favored the “20-10 Plan” which saw the state contributing twenty dollars to match every ten dollars from each county given in support of each student. “However, school enrollment continued to increase steadily and, again, the funding plan failed to meet the growing need. As Superintendent of Public Instruction, [elected in 1928-1937] Showalter continued his struggles to support all measures of financial reform. In response to the growing need, he prepared a 30-10 bill that was presented in 1928. The bill was designed to provide half the cost from state funds, one-quarter from county levies, and one-quarter through local district levies. This would reduce local effort from 60 percent to 25 percent of the total cost. Despite increasing support and intensive lobbying for its passage, the bill failed by just one vote.” (Hawkins, pages 56-57)

Showalter Bill of 1933:

Showalter then focused on updating the Barefoot Schoolboy Act. “He proposed a bill based on each child’s actual daily rate of attendance. The bill was built upon the assumption that all the children of the state were entitled to standard education privileges and that the state had responsibility to guarantee to them the means of securing equal service through a well organized school plan. The basic assumption was that the state was responsible for public education and that each citizen would be called upon for only a just share in providing for its maintenance.” (Hawkins, p. 57) However, this bill failed to win a majority.

Showalter made another attempt to amend the Act in 1933. “The appropriation allowed for an estimate of sixteen cents per pupil from state funds for each day of attendance at the elementary level, nineteen and one-fifth cents for each day of attendance at the junior high school, and twenty-two and two-fifth cents for each day of attendance at the senior high school.” (Hawkins, p.58)

Source:

Hawkins, Joyce Williams. N.D. Showalter: Washington State’s Noble Leader. Seattle University, (Thesis, Ed. D.), 1987

Charles Hodde, lobbyist for the Washington State Grange and future State Representative, commenting on the Showalter bill:

“Another almost forgotten part of the ’33 Legislature, which had a lot of significance at that time, was the so-called Showalter Bill. Showalter was the Superintendent of Public Instruction at that time, and he wanted to improve and increase the amount of money going to the school districts, improve the allocation and increase the amount of money going from the state to support local school districts. Going way back to 1896 or about that time, a gentleman by the name of—a member of the Legislature—name of Rogers had proposed a bill that gave the school some support starting out with five dollars per student per year, just on a flat basis for all those people in grade and high school. This had gradually been increased over the years until by 1933 this was at twenty dollars per student per year without any other real qualifications except that they were enrolled and in school.

Showalter came up with a proposal, which was more complex, required more money, but his proposal was that the payment be made on the basis of twenty-five cents per day. But not that simple really, because a day in school in the first eight grades was to be called one day, for that you were to get twenty-five cents per student per day. But if you were a junior high school student, then you counted each day as one and one-fifth days. If you were a senior high school student, you counted as one and two-fifths days. If you were in kindergarten you got a half a day for each day’s attendance. And to make it even more, well, you might say ridiculous, but complicated anyhow, all of the costs of transportation that were allocated were changed into attendance days. So each school district came up with you might call a computed days attendance and then were paid the same amount of money per day’s attendance, which meant, of course, that they got more cents per day in high school and junior high than in regular school, and less in kindergarten. This twenty-five cent figure was the objective; however, it was agreed that there’d be a pro-ration of any amount that the appropriation provided that it was less than the twenty-five cents. And it developed that what really was paid out in the first two years of operation was about sixteen cents per attendance day.

The new system was also designed to, in effect, penalize the districts that did not have at least 180 days of school. There were still some rural schools that, when they were hard up, they’d run for something less than nine months, but actually what the sixteen cents did, rather than the twenty dollars per student that was par before that, it gave a guarantee of $28.80 per student in grade school, $34.56 for junior high, and $40.32 or double in senior high. Had they been able to reach the twenty-five cents which was the targeted, it would have been, in effect, $45.00 for the eight grades or the lower grades, $54.00 for junior high, and $63.00 for senior high. But, of course, the finances of the day wouldn’t permit that. But the actual amount received by the schools was something less that the $28.80 in grade school and so forth, because any absence of any of the students cost the district their sixteen cents a day or the multiples for the high school and junior high.”

Charles Hodde: Mr. Speaker of the House, Legislative Oral History Project, State Archives publication, 1986 (pages 10-11)