SEQUIM — It took months of agonizing, but a school levy amount and tax rate for voters to consider have been set by the Sequim School District Board of Directors.
The school board, which approved the levy last Tuesday, will go to the voters of the large district — which stretches from Blue Mountain Road to Gardiner just inside Jefferson County — in a Feb. 9 election to ask for the three-year levy to begin in 2011.
If the ballot measure is approved, $4.05 million will be collected from the school district’s property owners the first year; it will rise to $4.9 million in 2012 and $5.78 million in 2013.
The proposed maintenance and operations levy comes with a considerably higher property tax rate than the present levy: in 2011, it will be 87 cents per $1,000 in assessed valuation, then increase to $1.03 in 2012 and $1.18 per thousand in 2013.
The current Sequim school levy, passed in 2006, will expire in 2010. It taxes property owners at 72.1 cents per $1,000 in assessed valuation.
The renewed levy, if it passes in February, will mean the owner of a $300,000 home, who this year pays $216.30 toward schools, will be paying$354 three years from now.
“We’re having to ask our community for more support for our schools, at a time that’s financially challenging for everyone,” acknowledged Sequim school board member Virginia O’Neil.
No other way
“Everyone on the board gets that,” but there is no other way, she added, to pay for the teachers and programs Sequim students need.
Sequim schools, like the rest around the state, were hit hard this year by Washington’s budget meltdown. The Sequim district was poised to cut some $1.2 million from the 2009-2010 budget, but the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka the federal stimulus package, came to the rescue — partly.
With that federal aid, the Sequim district ended up instead cutting about $800,000 from this year’s budget.
The district used the stimulus mostly to keep some of the teachers who would otherwise have been laid off.
At the same time a number of positions, vacated by teachers who resigned or retired, were left unfilled.
Also this year, the district-wide school nurse was turned into a limited part-time post and the school police officer position was cut.
Students returned in September to schools that had added almost no new textbooks and technology, and that will charge them to participate in after-school sports.
Years of deferred maintenance meant classrooms haven’t been painted in decades, and improvements like new roofs and heating systems have had to wait, Superintendent Bill Bentley has said.
Meantime, “we can’t defer maintenance on children,” school board president Sarah Bedinger said during last Tuesday’s meeting on the levy, when the board finally decided on the amount.
Funding shortfall
O’Neil added that Sequim faces a substantial funding shortfall by 2011.
“The stimulus saved us this year. But that money is going to go away,” she said, and “the state’s not going to fill that hole back in.”
Sequim’s schools have been underfunded for decades, O’Neil added.
She and Bedinger are on the board of Citizens for Sequim Schools, a grass-roots group advocating for the higher levy.
Community meeting
The group will host a community meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at the Sequim Boys & Girls Club, 400 W. Fir St., to discuss the future of school funding.
O’Neil, referring to the night a crowd came to hear about the possible relocation of gray wolves onto the Olympic Peninsula, called for an equally vigorous turnout at Monday’s session.
“I’m hoping that kids garner as much attention as wolves,” O’Neil said.
More than 100 attended the state Fish and Wildlife Department’s Nov. 5 presentation on wolf relocation.
Bedinger, for her part, added that of 280 Washington state school districts with local levys, Sequim ranks 227th in the amount of levy funding it receives.
“We’ve traditionally operated on such a conservative budget,” Bedinger emphasized.
“We’ve cut all our fixed expenses, to the point where we can’t afford things like books. And now, there is nowhere else to go but to cut into the classroom,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve been at this breaking point before, where we can look down the road and see such a significant shortfall” in state funding.
Bedinger said she well understands how the levy increase burdens taxpayers. But she believes the school board’s responsibility is to let Sequim area residents know what the schools need in terms of local support.
She added that she hopes Sequim School District residents will contact her and the other board members with their questions about the levy proposal.
Superintendent Bentley and Citizens for Sequim Schools members will be discussing the levy from now until the February election, Bedinger added.
She encouraged residents to phone the school district office at 360-582-3260 for information or visit the citizens’ group Web site, www.SequimSchools.com.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.