Last February it became clear to North Kitsap School District administrators that a looming financial deficit would soon bring the unenviable task of balancing the budget. With the 2019 legislative session completed and the full scope of the shortfall in view, district officials have begun prepping the chopping block as it attempts to navigate its budget out of the red.
According to NKSD Superintendent Laurynn Evans, declining student enrollment, competitive salaries and benefits for teachers, unfunded mandates, recent legislative developments and reductions to the district’s local levy authority have all played significant roles in building the approximately $3.5 million deficit.
“The local levy is the percentage of our budget that comes from our local voters,” Evans said. “In 2018 we went out to our voters with a four-year levy and at that time, because of the work of the legislature, we were capped in what we were allowed to ask our voters.”
$1.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value was the cap originally placed on the district when it approached voters last year to help shoulder the cost of educational programs and operations. Legislature later raised that cap, but not before local voters approved the levy at the previous rate.
“Legislature raised that authority to $2.50 per $1,000, we won’t be collecting that. We’ll still be collecting $1.50 per $1,000 because that is what we were authorized to do by our voters,” Evans explained. “We will go back to our voters in 2022, that’s when the current levy expires and at that point, we will have to determine what is the appropriate ask from our voters.”
According to the superintendent, when the district returns to voters in hopes of securing funding again in 2022, it will have to balance asking for an amount that will be reasonable for voters while also providing ample resources for district operations. Evans added that she would be “quite surprised” if the North Kitsap School District approached voters asking for the full $2.50 per $1,000 currently allowed by the Legislature.
“We want to make sure that the ask is reasonable but we also need to ensure that we’re making an ask that will allow us to fund all of the programs that we’re offering for our students.” Evans said. “One of the things that we have to be mindful of is the capacity of our voting public. It’s an election, so we have to be extremely mindful of what we believe our voters would support. We know that we have good support at $1.50, I don’t know that with the increase in state taxes, if we would see the same kind of support for a $1 increase per $1,000.”
The prospect of local voters approving a higher levy rate seems to be the light at the end of a three-year-long tunnel, in the interim the district must figure out how to make ends meet until the current levy expires.
In a recent message to community members Evans listed a number of possible areas within the district where cuts or adjustments could be made to meet the shortfall. Included on the list were:Reducing district and building leadership and administration by two full-time positions
Reducing Student Support Center staff by two full-time positions
Closing the district’s centralized copy service center
Creating transportation efficiencies
Staffing to need and appropriate ratio, along with more careful analysis of classes to ensure staff efficiency while maintaining class size limits
Freezing or slowing current spending and reducing hiring efforts
Reducing curriculum budget by $200,000
Fee increases for the North Kitsap Community Pool, school meals, and other district facilities rentals
When asked if the North Kitsap School District would be looking for insight by examining how other districts have responded to financial shortfalls, Evans said finding an appropriate analog remains complicated.
“It’s difficult to say that we’re going to base our response on the way another district would handle it,” she said. “The reason for that is every district has a very different circumstance.”
The Bainbridge Island School District recently declared, for the second time in three years, that it will be feeling the sting of budget crises. Despite the district’s experience with handling fiscal emergencies, Evans said the North Kitsap and Bainbridge Island school districts were hardly comprable.
“Bainbridge Island’s average assessed value is over twice what the assessed value is in our school district,” she explained. “Central Kitsap is a different example because they receive a significantly larger amount of impact aid from the government than we do. For us to model a response based on either of our neighbors, doesn’t really work well for us.”
Despite the differences between districts, Evans did note one similarity: “What we are seeing is most of our neighbors are in the same situation we are in, which is an approximate five-percent shortfall overall.”
Evans spoke candidly when asked about what she found to be the hardest aspect of working to navigate the district through its financial woes.
“The hardest part about this is knowing that the need that is out there, far exceeds our ability to support it,” the superintendent said. “I’m out in classrooms all the time and I see that need all the time … It is very difficult to know that decisions we make could possibly adversely impact the educational process of a child.”
“I look in the eyes of kids and I look in the eyes of my employees and I see the reality of their situation, they’re doing everything they can with what they’ve got, and now I’m going to tell them to do more with less. It stinks.”
