PORT ANGELES — The search for a new permanent principal at Port Angeles High School has been halted as a direct result of last week’s Port Angeles School District’s double tax levy failure.
The move by Superintendent Gary Cohn represents the first effect from the Feb. 8 election in which a replacement maintenance and operations, or M&O, levy and a capital technology levy fell short of garnering the minimum 60 percent of yes votes needed to pass.
District officials have signaled that they likely will seek another replacement M&O levy — designed to fill the gap between state and federal funding and the district’s real costs — in the spring.
If the second M&O levy bid falls short again, the district will lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in state levy equalization funds as well as be forced to cut more $6 million from district budgets in 2005 and 2006, officials said.
The district wouldn’t be able to run another M&O until February of 2006.
‘Untenable position’
“Due to the [M&O] levy failure . . . I’ve determined to cancel the high school principal search this year,” Cohn said Wednesday.
“I believe the levy failure compromises our search process and places the candidates and the district in difficult — if not untenable — positions.”
Cohn said Scott Harker, who was named interim principal after Michelle Reid accepted a district assistant superintendent post last November, agreed to a second one-year appointment for the 2005-2006 school year.
