Letter About Upcoming School Levy

June Arnold, Chair of the San Juan Island School Board, shares this letter with you about the upcoming School Levy…

This February 9th, our school district will ask the voters of San Juan Island to renew a Capital Projects and Technology Levy. This levy will both ensure ongoing maintenance and repair of our school buildings (which we the taxpayers own), as well as provide our students and teaching staff with the classroom space and technology infrastructure required to be productive citizens in this digital age.

School funding has been in the news a lot lately and it’s probably worth a quick discussion of how schools in the State of Washington are funded, what has happened recently, and why this levy is so important to our community.

There are four tax based sources intended for education: State, Federal, local Maintenance & Operations, and local Capital & Technology. State funding or what is normally referred to as Basic Education funding is provided on a per student basis. Approximately 80% of these dollars are dedicated to paying teachers and support position salaries. The remainder pays for operations of the schools; things like utility bills, insurance and limited classroom supplies.

Next there is Federal funding, and you may have recently read the about the Every Student Succeeds Act. This replaces No Child Left Behind and did not provide any new funding, just different reporting requirements. Federal monies make up a small, but important portion of the funding for a district our size and are generally targeted at special programs aimed at supporting at-risk students. Both of these funding sources are restricted, meaning they can only be spent within very limited parameters and are not intended for construction or technology.

Locally we have a Maintenance and Operations Levy and a Capital and Technology Levy. These run every 2 years, on even years, and span 4 year cycles. Think of it like the Summer and Winter Olympic Games cycle. The Maintenance and Operations Levy makes up the difference between what the state and federal government formulas fund. It gives us our small class sizes at the elementary school and advanced placement classes at the secondary level through providing extra teaching staff. The Capital and Technology Levy is super simple – it funds the physical things you can see and touch – roofs, walls, windows, heating systems, desks, chairs, computers, monitors, printers, network and some of the staff associated with making sure all this stuff is maintained and supported.

Additionally, the state provides little or no money for all this stuff. The overwhelming support for these two local levies speak volumes in terms of how each and every one of us value education and those who provide it in our community.

Finally, you may have heard about the McCleary Decision in the news. The short version is our State Supreme Court ruled the State of Washington is failing to fund basic education as defined by our state constitution. What the ruling actually recognizes is that without local levies, there is not enough money to run schools adequately and deliver the minimum “basic education”. In some districts across the state, when local levies fail – teachers are laid off, leaky roofs are not repaired and students do not receive an education that will allow them to be contributing members of our society.

This year the state stepped up and funded minimum cost of living raises for teachers and all-day kindergarten in some districts. At some point the state will have to figure out how to meet all the terms of the McCleary Decision, but until that happens a significant portion of the responsibility of providing a quality education lies within each community.

I encourage you to support public education and ensure the right to a quality education is not a privilege of the wealthy or lucky, but the right of every child living on this island by voting YES. School funding is messy and complicated, but I am pretty sure we can all agree we would not want to live in a world that did not value the education of our youth.

If you have any questions regarding public education funding or specific items to be funded by the Capital and Technology Levy, please do not hesitate to contact me. My phone number and email address can be found on the district’s website under the school board tab. You can also find specific information at www.sjlevy.org.

Sincerely,
June Arnold, Chair – San Juan Island School Board

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