A myriad of issues has placed a crunch on the Ellensburg School District’s 2023-2024 budget, which will need to be cut by approximately $1 million.
This follows the previous year’s budget reduction of $1.38 million.
“Making budget reductions is challenging and often difficult, but in ESD we have a collaborative plan for moving forward with this necessary process,” said Superintendent Jinger Haberer.
The district pointed to several factors making the budget cuts necessary.
One issue was the continued fallout from the state Supreme Court’s McCleary ruling in 2018. The ruling determined school districts in Washington relied too much on local tax levies and that it was the state’s role to adequately fund schools. Ultimately, districts were given limits on how much they could tax locally.
Prior to the ruling, the Ellensburg School District’s levy rate was $3.40 per $1,000 of assessed value. Following the ruling, the levy rate fell to $1.50 per $1,000. Legislators have since raised the cap to $2.50, but the cap still falls short of Ellensburg’s previous levy rate.
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Another issue is the flat salary rate of about $72,000 the state pays for each full-time teacher. Over 50% of the Ellensburg district’s teachers have more than 10 years of teaching experience, which puts many of their salaries above the state funding level.
“We really believe ESD should not be penalized by the state for having a dedicated and stable workforce,” Haberer said.
Meanwhile, expenses have grown, and the district has seen an increase in students who require one-on-one care in recent years. To meet their educational needs, the district had to increase the number of personnel in its special education program. According to Haberer, this program is an underfunded mandate by the state, costing the district $700,000 more than allotted by state and federal funding.
Some of the help that school districts received through emergency relief funds during the pandemic are drying up. At the same time, the Ellensburg district has seen enrollment drop since the pandemic due to parents relocating for work or electing to homeschool their children. Funding is paid per student, which means less money is coming in.
“We’re still looking at what we can do to engage families, maybe who are homeschooling or maybe had to move because of job situations and all those shifts that happened (due to the pandemic),” Haberer said.
As for how the cuts will be made, the district is following a new process provided by a consultant that complies with the district’s principles that reductions be “quantifiable, sustainable for a three-year period, honoring of the Board Budget priorities and not causing significant disruptions to major functions of the organization.”
The district is asking stakeholders to give input via a survey that is available on the district’s website.
“I encourage our staff, parents and community members to visit the front page of our website and fill out the survey,” Haberer said.
The survey will close at 5 p.m. on Jan. 23, after which the data will be vetted by a district team composed of district personnel, a board member and staff from Educational Service District 105.
The vetting process will produce a review list that will be sent to two committees on Feb. 21, the Student-Centered Learning Committee and the Ellensburg School District Staff Budget Committee. On Feb. 21, the two committees will meet separately to identify the impacts of the budget items under review. The teams will meet twice together in March using a consensus model to move the items under review to a “Final Budget Reduction List.”
On April 12, the committees will present their final recommendations to the School Board.
