Not surprisingly, economics and money were the first topics of conversation as State Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-1, held her annual education forum with a crowd of a few hundred local secondary school students, their parents and teachers.

Chair of the state senate’s K-12 education committee, McAuliffe worked the crowd of mostly high-school and junior-high-school students from around the Northshore School District for about an hour and a half.

The forum took place in the event center on the campus of the University of Washington, Bothell, the evening of Dec. 16.

“We all know the economy’s in trouble,” McAuliffe said to launch the evening.

Various students offered what they held out as various tangible signs of the effect tight and reduced budgets have had on local schools.

An Inglemoor High student stated her advanced math class did not have enough text books to go around at the start of the school year. Students apparently lost to budget cuts a $40,000 state grant that had been awarded to Northshore’s Secondary Academy for Success (SAS).

SAS has an extensive automotive program and a SAS student said the grant would have gone toward converting an older model car into an electric car. The student said the program actually already had spent some of the promised money.

Lastly, other students mentioned class sizes ranging from 53 to 37 students.

Stating that she feels “hate” for her proposed 2011-2013 budget, Gov. Chris Gregoire said the plan she unveiled Dec. 15 cuts overall state spending by $4.6 billion, including $1.1 billion sliced from Washington’s education budget. Gregoire accomplished the latter cuts by suspending two education-related initiatives passed in 2000.

Initiative 728 was intended to ensure small class sizes, as well as extra opportunities for out-of-class learning. Initiative 732 was to guarantee raises for teachers and other school employees.

During the forum, McAuliffe several times noted that Gregoire’s proposed budget is just that, a proposal marking the start of the state budget process. She said legislators must approve Gregoire’s plans and will have the opportunity to make changes to the budget.

“I’m going back to Olympia in January to try and put some dollars back into education,” McAuliffe said at one point. She admitted a couple of times that lawmakers may have a tough time finding dollars to restore programs, but she suggested the state could save roughly $250 million by closing schools for one day, essentially giving school employees an unpaid furlough day. The idea did not get a lot of support from students who argued against reducing instruction time.

An eighth-grader at Kenmore Junior High, Meghan Duft suggested the schools look to private charities such as the Gates Foundation for help with the budget.

For her part, McAuliffe said private groups can be and often are helpful, but she also added private grants often come with strings. She further said programs often have to be dropped when the private dollars run out.

On another front, school bullying, especially cyber-bullying, attracted plenty of attention.

McAuliffe was impressed by the thought of a Woodinville student who hoped the schools could help teach how to be good cyber-citizens. A member of that school’s student government, an Inglemoor student talked about her school holding “bullying blitzes.” The idea is to allow students to talk about issues with their peers, issues they may hesitate to bring up with adults.

McAuliffe urged students to continue the involvement they had begun by attending the forum.

“Don’t let it stop here,” she said. “You’ve got to keep it going.”