The North Thurston School Board unanimously passed a $124.3 million budget Tuesday night.
The 14,000-student district has made about $7 million in cuts since 2007, when federal, state and local revenues began to shrink. But this year’s spending reductions will hit teachers especially hard.
“No question, our teachers deserve a lot of credit for agreeing to sacrifices that allowed us to maintain our comprehensive program for students, and we deeply appreciate their understanding of this extraordinary economic situation,” said John Bash, the district’s chief operations officer. “… All of our employees have made and agreed to sacrifice individually.”
To stay in the black, $968,413 from the district’s reserve fund and cuts include:
• A 1.3 percent salary reduction for all teachers. Lawmakers cut state salary allocations for all Washington state teachers by 1.9 percent, but local districts are allowed to figure out ways to absorb cuts.
“Because the state has never fully funded the cost of all of our teaching staff, the 1.9 percent reduction signed by the governor was actually a 1.3 percent reduction as we calculated the loss in North Thurston,” Bash said. “Our teachers agreed to fully absorb the state funding reduction.”
• A 1.65 percent salary reduction for all administrators. Lawmakers cut salary allocations for administrators by 3 percent.
• A reduction of about 25 full-time equivalent teachers throughout the district. Many of those positions were at the elementary school level, and most were taken care of with attrition, district officials say.
The staff cuts will help the district make up about $1.1 million of lost state funding that was aimed at lowering class sizes. Fewer teachers mean bigger class sizes.
“We made a one-year agreement to have a little more flexibility for class size, in this year only,” said Conni Van Hoose, president of the North Thurston Education Association. “But we did not change our contract language in class size.”
The current level for K-3 is 25, and under a new memorandum of understanding a teacher can have up to 27 students.
“That doesn’t mean that every class will increase by two,” Van Hoose said. “We’re trying to keep them down. We want to keep them to what we have.”
For grades 4-6, the class size limit will go from 30 to 32; and middle and high school classes will go to an average of 32, Van Hoose said.
“We’re hoping we don’t have to exceed what the current level is because that’s not what’s in the best interest of the kids,” she said.
• The elimination of nine full-time equivalent paraeducator positions, two custodial positions and one groundskeeper job. In addition, classified employees will face wage freezes.
• A savings of $29,000 in athletic travel by having families provide students’ transportation home after away games that are local.
“We are continuing to look at which teams that makes sense for. It’s not limited to one sport, but we have to make sure that it’s reasonable on the equipment, the time of day, and the ability for parents and students to support the trip back home,” Bash said.
Lisa Pemberton: 360-754-5433 lpemberton@theolympian.com
