Board members and superintendents from each of Island County’s three school districts will convene for a dinner and meeting with state lawmakers today to discuss such topics as class sizes, state funding for public education and other issues.

Steve Scoles, vice-chair of the South Whidbey School District board of directors and Rocco Gianni, legislative representative for South Whidbey School District, will be in attendance as will South Whidbey School District Superintendent Jo Moccia.

From legislative District 10, Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton; Rep. Dave Hayes, R-Camano; and Sen. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor are all expected to attend.

The meeting is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10, in the Coupeville High School Commons.

According to Scoles, South Whidbey school directors are looking forward to the meeting, as it’s a chance to speak directly with those with the power to make change in Olympia.

“We enjoy sharing with legislators because they are hearing straight from the horse’s mouth,” said Scoles.

Scoles said major decisions regarding topics like school funding often come back to legislators. Scoles referenced the McCleary decision, a 2012 Washington State Supreme Court ruling that determined lawmakers, not the courts, are best equipped to handle the needs of students and that legislators were not meeting their constitutional duty to adequately fund public education.

According to http://washingtonpolicy.org, McCleary justices also noted that simply adding money to the public school system would not be sufficient for the legislature to meet its constitutional duty, stating “pouring money into an outmoded system will not succeed.”

On Sept. 11, the court also issued a decision holding the Washington State Legislature in contempt for its lack of progress in dealing with state funding for public education.

“Right now the legislature is under the gun from the McCleary decision … and also the class size initiative that passed in November,” said Scoles.

Voters approved Initiative 1351, a measure to reduce class sizes in public schools by hiring additional teachers, administrators and school district support staff on the November ballot.

Scoles said the topic of conversation usually consists of general issues rather than specifics, though Island County school board members sometimes bring up problems such as declining enrollment or the difficulty of finding employment on Whidbey Island.

“It’s hard to know if there are tangible changes but they need to hear from us that education is the paramount duty of the state and they’re the ones holding the purse strings,” Scoles said.

Smith was unavailable for comment prior to press time.

According to Hayes, the feedback legislators receive from school board members at such meetings is paramount to aiding legislators’ decision making.

Hayes said he has “no doubt” that the group will discuss overall education funding and the McCleary ruling.

He also expects the group to address the methods by which legislators hand down laws to school district officials. The legislature has a “bad track record” of handing down overly complicated or costly mandates, said Hayes, and that’s something he hopes to remedy by providing school districts with more flexibility.

“We pass things down that become complicated in the rules process,” Hayes said. “When OSPI [the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction] or the Department of Education write the rules that tell the school district how to comply with the Revised Code of Washington, it becomes too complicated.”

In addition, Hayes said standardized testing is likely to be a major point of discussion, particularly due to the reliance on test scores in determining high school graduation eligibility.

The past decade has seen four different types of standardized tests issued for graduation, and that’s too many variations in Hayes’ opinion.

“The state legislature has constantly moved the target on state educators and then come back and pointed the finger at them about why test scores are low,” he said. “We hold our teachers and educators accountable for the fact that we are constantly moving the target.”

“I think what we need to bring to that picture is some certainty for parents, educators, and students,” said Hayes, explaining that for families with multiple children, each child may have had to pass a different test in order to graduate from high school, adding undue stress on all involved.

“We need to put standards in place for a certain amount of time and allow them [students] to meet them,” Hayes said.