The state Legislature’s midyear cuts to public schools slash more than $3.74 million from North Olympic Peninsula Schools.
“I have never in 33 years of education ever had the budget cut during the current fiscal year,” said Port Angeles School District Superintendent Jane Pryne.
“This is the first year I have ever seen anything like this happen.”
The Legislature on Saturday voted to cut $583 million from its budget with about $100 million of that in cuts to school districts.
“This is unprecedented,” Chimicum School District Superintendent Craig Downs said.
On the heels of those cuts, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday released her proposed budget that urges the Legislature to extend those cuts for the next biennium, along with trimming more than $3 billion from education funding.
The Legislature voted on Saturday to decrease what state money to school districts by the same amount that they receive through the federal Education Jobs Fund program, said Jim Schwob, Port Angeles School District business manager.
The federal money goes to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which distributes the money to the individual school districts.
Among other cuts are suspension of a payment meant to reduce classes sizes in kindergarten through fourth grade.
Although not all of the school district leaders are sure yet how the Legislature’s action will affect them, here is how they computed midyear cuts in state funding as of Wednesday.
• Port Angeles School District — $1.27 million.
• Sequim School District — $761,000.
• Quillayute Valley School District — $820,00 to $830,000.
• Crescent School District — $110,000.
• Cape Flattery School District — at least $140,000. Not all have been calculated.
• Port Townsend School District — $339,000.
• Chimacum School District — at least $284,000. Not all have been calculated.
• Brinnon School District — $15,000.
• Quilcene School District hasn’t yet calculated how much it will lose, acting Superintendent Jim Betteley said.
All of the districts said they will either tighten their belts or use reserves to fill the gaps.
The Port Angeles School District, the largest public school district on the Peninsula, was hit the hardest.
Schwob told the School Board that the state amount matching the federal money comes to about $827,000 for Port Angeles.
That, coupled with more than $200,000 in funding from the state for extra teachers in grades kindergarten through fourth grade, will result in a loss of more than $1 million, Schwob said.
He said he had anticipated the action and that the district has sufficient reserves to cover this year.
In Sequim, about $579,000, matching the federal funds, will be cut as well as about $182,000 in the elementary teachers category, said Brian Lewis, business manager for the district.
“We didn’t count on those funds actually being there,” Lewis said.
The $182,000 loss will be covered with reserves, he said.
He said he believes the cuts for this fiscal year — which stretches from July 2010 through June 2011 — are not over yet.
“They still have more to cut and we’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.
“These cuts just go to show the depths of the problems they are dealing with.”
Quillayute Valley School District in Forks will lose about $750,000 plus $70,000 and $80,000 in funding for elementary school teachers.
“However, when we budgeted for this school year we were not counting on receiving [the Education Jobs Fund money],” said Superintendent Diana Reaume.
“We will be shifting some of our funding for the school year, but we will not eliminate staffing positions.”
Crescent School District Superintendent Tom Anderson said that, this year, he will watch expenses to take care of the $15,000 in reductions for elementary teachers, but that next year, reductions in staffing might be needed.
Although the Education Jobs Fund cuts would amount to $95,000 for the district, Anderson said he never budgeted to use it.
“That is money we never received and never intended to spend in the first place,” he said.
Cape Flattery School District hasn’t yet calculated the impact of the cuts to elementary school teacher jobs, but the cut equal to the Education Jobs Fund money will eliminate about $140,000 to the district.
“In the middle of the year with contracts, there isn’t much cuts you can make to staffing, so the only thing you can cut are programs — and then you are really impacting kids even more,” Cape Flattery Superintendent Kandy Ritter said.
Port Townsend School District Superintendent Gene Laes said he had expected to lose the $269,000 in Education Jobs Fund money, and that the district will reduce expenses to manage the $70,000 in funding for elementary teachers without dipping into reserves.
“We were going to do some good things with the money, but the state is in dire straits and education takes the least hits out of everyone,” he said.
“But then when you think that the state’s paramount duty is fully funding basic education — I don’t know.”
Downs, Chimacum’s superintendent, said that he and officials from other school districts “are all pretty frustrated because we understand that there are cuts that have to be made, and even though they may be hard, we would like to at least be able to plan for them.
“When we are hit mid-year, we are basically just stuck with no options to budget.”
Downs said he doesn’t yet know how much the district will lose in elementary school teacher funds. The cut equal to the federal Education Jobs Fund allocation will cost about $284,000.
He said that the district was notified of the federal funds after the budget was completed, so that cut won’t demand a dip into reserves.
“Essentially what they did was they gave us the money through the federal bill and then they took it away now through our general fund,” Downs said.
“But we never actually spent it or planned for it.
“It isn’t something we budgeted for. We found out about it in September.
“It was a like a Christmas gift that didn’t have anything in it.”
Because Brinnon School District already operates below the student-to-teacher ratio, a cut in elementary teacher jobs funding will have little impact on the district, Superintendent Nancy Thompson said.
The cut equal to the Education Jobs Fund money will cost the district about $15,000, she said.
“We were going to use that money to provide services for our pre-school tuition free,” she said.
“Now we will have to find a way to use district finances.”
This year, at least, the pre-school isn’t in danger, but she said she wasn’t yet sure what would happen next year.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
