PORT ANGELES — Amid uncertainty on what will happen with funding from the state and federal governments, the Port Angeles School Board unanimously passed a nearly $39 million budget Monday night.
The budget will dip into reserves for about $600,000.
Because Gov. Chris Gregoire has voiced the idea of slicing about 5 percent of the education budget — she has said that she suggests cutting local levy assistance funds — the district could be out a total of about $338,000, said Jim Schwob, executive director of business and operations.
However, whether and how much remains a mystery, he said.
“I don’t want to start saying the sky is falling until the sky is actually falling,” said board member Patti Happe.
Another unknown is a jobs bill passed by Congress this month. The $26 billion bill is expected to pass on about $205 million to education jobs in Washington state.
However, the state has not even applied for the money, Schwob said.
Cancel out fund cuts
Ultimately the money from the federal government could potentially cancel out the cuts from the state if both were to come through, but both are still up in the air, Schwob said.
Final word on either is not expected until October, a month after school starts Sept. 2.
“I think we from the board need to write to the governor that this is not acceptable,” said board Vice President Cindy Kelly.
“[The uncertainty] is affecting our kids — it’s affecting our communities.”
To balance the budget, the district cut the equivalent of 5.345 teaching positions — but all positions were eliminated by attrition, so no teachers were laid off.
Schwob said the $600,000 might not be needed but is budgeted just in case.
He described the total budget of $38,967,760 as a “threshold.”
“That is the threshold of how much we are allowed to spend,” he said.
“If it turns out we have less than that or our funding sources change, we will have to be cognizant and find ways to cut, but the budget ultimately tells us up to how much we are allowed to spend.”
No one from the public spoke at a public hearing on the budget Monday night.
The School Board has been working on the budget since April.
At a previous meeting, the School Board had also voted to cut out six teacher training days because the state funding had been lost.
That amounted to about a 3 percent pay cut for teachers, they said.
However, other sources of funding have allowed the district to restore four training days for other kinds of training and to evaluate how students are progressing, Schwob said.
The budget cuts para-educators by 2,070 hours annually, or a 1.25 full-time equivalent.
The board cut $1,970,373 from the draft budget because the state had slashed funding programs and because of declining enrollment.
Public schools are reimbursed money from the state for enrollment.
The trend for several years throughout the North Olympic Peninsula has been a decline in enrollment.
In Port Angeles, the enrollment peak was in 1967, when 5,138 students attended.
A new low was reached in 2009-2010, with 3,721 students.
Projected enrollment for 2010-2011 is 3,588.7 full-time equivalents, Schwob has said.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
