As local residents might expect, Northshore School District officials were happy if cautious.

“I’m pleased,” said Superintendent Larry Francois. “It validates what I’ve believed to be true, which is that the state has not stepped up to the plate and funded basic education.”

Northshore Board of Directors President Dawn McCravey said she found the ruling of King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick “amazingly readable,” as well as correct.

Issuing a long-awaited judgement in a suit filed in 2007, Erlick ruled earlier this month that the state is not meeting its duty to fund basic education in Washington.

Two families and a coalition of more than 75 school districts — including Northshore — brought the suit alleging the state was failing to meet its obligations regarding funding for education.

Judging from his 78-page ruling, Erlick obviously agrees, essentially stating that Olympia legislators are violating the Washington Constitution’s call to make paying for basic education their top priority.

In part, Erlick’s ruling reads that the word “paramount” in Article IX, Section 1 of the Constitution means “preeminent, supreme and more important than all others” and that funding K-12 education is “the State’s first and highest priority before any other State programs or operations.”

Erlick added that the state “has not designed or implemented a State system that (1) determines the actual cost of amply providing all Washington children with the education mandated by this court’s interpretation of Article IX, Section 1, and (2) fully funds that actual cost with stable and dependable State sources.”

Finally, Erlick ordered the legislature to “proceed with real and measurable progress” in determining the costs of providing students with the “basic knowledge and skills needed to compete in today’s economy and meaningfully participate in this State’s democracy,” and to establish a stable, dependable funding source to pay those costs.

“Society will ultimately pay for these students,” Erlick wrote. “The State will pay for their education now or society will pay for them later through unemployment, welfare, or incarceration.”

While Erlick clearly ruled in favor of the Network for Excellence in Washington Schools (NEWS) coalition, what happens next is just as clearly a big question, according to Francois and others.

“This is hardly the last say,” Francois said, noting the state can, of course, appeal the ruling.

“Improving the quality of our schools and the education system has been and remains the top priority of our state,” said Gov. Christine Gregoire in a prepared statement. “I agree with the court that we have a duty to provide a high quality education to our children.”

Gregoire added that her staff and that of the state attorney general will be reviewing the ruling to determine “where we go from here.”

Francois said even if the state does not appeal Erlick’s ruling, the legislature still needs to act to increase funding. Erlick apparently gave no specific guidelines to the legislature as to how to proceed, nor did he attempt to impose any specific deadlines on lawmakers.

Erlick’s decision is similar to a ruling of the state Supreme Court in 1978. In Seattle School District v. State of Washington, the state’s high court ruled that a school district’s reliance on special levy funding violated the state’s “paramount duty to . . . make ample provision for the education of all children.”

Years later, Northshore schools were one of just a number of systems floating levies on the Feb. 9 ballot. Still, some of Northshore’s Olympia representatives applauded Erlick’s ruling.

“I’m very pleased,” said District 32 State Rep. Maralyn Chase, D-Shoreline.

Chase’s district includes the Northshore schools.

“I’ve been fighting for a long time to get adequate funding for the schools,” Chase continued, stating the court ruling simply verified her own beliefs. Chase said she and some other legislators are trying to talk Gregoire into not appealing the decision. She contends Erlick’s ruling was worded carefully enough that any appeal might prove difficult.

For her part, the chair of the senate’s early education and K-12 education committee, State Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, also welcomed the ruling. The timing apparently was coincidental, but on Feb. 11, the senate passed what McAuliffe touted as a major education reform bill on which she was the lead sponsor.

The bill has the backing of Gregoire and among other provisions, calls for increased measurement of the performance of individual schools. After a school judged to be in academic straits has gone so long without any improvement in the performance of its students, the state could, with the cooperation of the local district, take control of such a school.

On Feb. 12, the state House put the bill on first reading in front of its education committee.

As for Erlick’s ruling, McAuliffe said her committee would be working its through a study of the long decision. She didn’t have any insight regarding whether or not an appeal is in the works and said the legislative leadership does not have a specific plan in response to the court ruling as of yet.

“We don’t have a strategy,” she said. “But we will.”

In the meantime, Francois and McCravey were among numerous school officials in Olympia recently, lobbying for school issues. McCravey said one very hot topic in the state capital is a proposal to lift the lids imposed on local school levies largely by voter-approved Initiative 747.

Essentially, the lid lifts would grant district’s the opportunity to collect more in local property taxes than is currently allowed.

According to McCravey, Gregoire has floated increasing the lid by 12 percent. A counter proposal lowers that figure to 4 percent. In either case, Francois and McCravey both argued while the proposals would mean more money for schools, the change could be seen as state legislators once more passing the buck, putting the burden for education funding on strictly local revenue sources instead of the state kicking in more dollars.

While she blasted Washington’s tax system as among the most regressive in the country, Chase said she would support allowing increased local levy collections. She agreed an argument could be made that such lid lifts only increase the percentage of school funding paid for by homeowners.

But Chase added that for now, the schools need more cash.

“Whatever we can do, we have to do,” she said.

Journal of the San Juans Editor Richard Walker contributed to this story.