Funding education likely will dominate much of the upcoming state Legislative session, with the McCleary court decision calling for the state to fund fully K-12 education and the narrow passage of Initiative 1351 regulating classroom size. 

When legislators grapple with these mandates that will cost billions of dollars to address, one challenge will be making sure that community colleges don’t get lost in the shuffle. Marty Brown, executive director of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, says it well: “We want to make sure when these kids get a better high school education that there is some place for them to go.”

Even before the new measures created the looming budgeting woes, the state’s community and technical colleges—there are 34 of them in all—had lost ground from a budgeting standpoint. 

Their collective budget for the 2013-15 biennium is 23 percent lower than it was in 2009, when adjusted for inflation. 

In that span, students’ costs have risen, and the value proposition compared with other states has been compromised. Community college students’ tuition currently covers 35 percent of the cost of their education. In 2009, they had to foot 24 percent of the bill. 

With rising tuition, Washington state has the 16th highest community-college tuition among states that have a two-year system. Five years ago, it ranked in the middle of the pack, at 26th.

Despite the fact that tuition has risen and funding has declined, Brown says faculty hasn’t received a bump in pay in six years. 

Full-time tuition at the community colleges—it’s the same statewide, regardless of which school a student attends—is $4,000 for the 2014-15 school year. Brown says community college tuition, while higher, still is about a third of the cost of Washington State University and University of Washington, and less than half the cost of Eastern Washington University, Central Washington University, and other institutions of similar size.

But it’s important to remember that this system is serving a large cross-section of the workforce, and it’s important to keep that education attainable for as much of the population as possible. 

The community college board’s statistics indicate the two-year colleges serve nearly 400,000 people a year. Forty percent of baccalaureate graduates in the state start at a community college. 

Of those who don’t go on to a four-year school and complete a job-training program, 78 percent have jobs within nine months, those stats show.

I have two children in elementary school. I have seen firsthand the benefits of early education and the value of a good school with talented staff. Every kid should be afforded the opportunity my children have been granted.

But in that pursuit, we mustn’t forget the next and most necessary step in transitioning from high school to the workforce for many people in our state. The community colleges must remain a priority. Our community’s workforce and its employers are counting on it.