SEQUIM — This place may feel like a small community, but one of its key members is in need of a big financial boost, said Bill Bentley, chief of the Sequim area’s second-largest employer: the school district.
The district has an annual budget of $25.1 million and a staff of 354 people, making it second in size only to the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, whose health clinics, tribal government and businesses employ 628 people in winter and more in summertime.
The future holds serious funding crises for Sequim’s schools, however, unless the district wins substantial local support in the form of a higher levy, Bentley told members of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.
Proposed levy increase
During the chamber’s lunch at Pioneer Park, the audience fell silent as the superintendent outlined the proposed school levy increase.
If approved by the voters, it will hike property taxes across the Sequim School District, which reaches from Blue Mountain Road to Gardiner.
The proposal is for a three-year levy that would replace the one expiring in 2010, Bentley began.
During the first year, it would mean 87 cents in property tax for every $1,000 in assessed valuation, so on a $250,000 home, the levy would add $217.50 to the annual bill.
In year two, the rate would rise to $1.03 per thousand, or $257.50 per year in property tax, and in the third year it would go to $1.18 per thousand, or $295 on that quarter-million-dollar house.
Below state average
This may sound steep to some — and it is a substantial increase from the current levy rate of 72.1 cents per $1,000 in assessed valuation.
But Bentley emphasized that Sequim’s levys, current and proposed, are far below the state average of $1.78 per thousand in assessed valuation.
Further, per-student spending of levy dollars is less than other school districts across the North Olympic Peninsula, he added.
While the Sequim district spends $1,086 in levy funds per student per year, the Port Angeles School District spends $1,875 per student and Port Townsend spends $1,920, Bentley said.
The superintendent then predicted that Sequim schools’ need for a levy increase will intensify amid a one-two punch from the state.
First there are Washington’s financial woes, including a multibillion-dollar budget deficit that’s expected to drag on through next year.
Then there’s the fact that as people leave rural Clallam County to seek jobs in urban areas, school enrollment shrinks. Like most other school districts on the north Peninsula, Sequim is watching its head count fall, and along with it the $4,800 in state funding per student.
Bentley reported Sequim’s current enrollment at 2,891, and projected that it will slip to about 2,600 three years from now.
At the same time, family incomes in the Sequim district are falling. That’s indicated, Bentley noted, by a rise in the number of students who come from low-income households, which qualify them for free or reduced-price lunches.
A decade ago, just 25 percent were eligible for that federally funded benefit, he said. Now 40 percent of Sequim students qualify for the free or reduced-price meals.
Next Bentley sought to give his audience a picture of what the levy money funds.
The biggest piece, $1.93 million, goes toward teachers’ salaries and benefits; then there’s $120,000 for the buses that take children to school and on field trips; $160,000 for textbooks; another $160,000 for technology and $340,000 for extracurricular activities.
During the first year of the replacement levy — the 2010-2011 academic year — Bentley hopes to use the funds to restore teaching positions that were cut this year, buy some new textbooks and possibly restore some programs hurt in the 2009 cutting.
In the second and third years, levy dollars would go toward restoring the school nurse, a counselor and other positions and programs that were taken out of the district budget this year.
This spending plan is designed to reflect the results of a community survey that Bentley cited during his presentation.
Small class size — hiring more teachers, in other words — was the No. 1 priority for 71 percent of the respondents to a survey posted earlier this year on the Sequim School District’s Web site (www.sequim.k12.wa.us).
High-quality books and other learning materials were top priority for 65 percent.
The all-mail levy election is set to end Feb. 9, with ballots to be mailed to Sequim School District residents Jan. 22.
And though Bentley asked for a show of hands from the parents in his chamber audience, he urged everyone present to consider how the school system, and its funding, affect the community.
“Our schools belong to all of us,” he said. “Our kids are all of our kids.”
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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.