Welcome to summer vacation everyone!
As of Friday, all schools are out for the summer. The last graduation ceremony, Bellingham Technical College’s, will be on Tuesday. Whatcom Community College and Northwest Indian College’s are both tonight.
I know this school year has been really stressful, so I hope everyone has a fun and safe summer vacation.
School district budgets will continue to be approved this summer, so watch for those education articles.
I will be away for much of this summer, but I will update School Days as information comes across my desk.
Kira,
On the subject of budgets, it might be useful to cover some of the current controversies on school budgets such as those being brought forth by the Neighborhood Schools Coalition. For your readers their blog is at http://www.neighborhoodschoolscoalition.blogspot.com/ By the time the budgets are passed, it will be too late for discussions which need to take place now. The Mayor’s Neighborhood Advisory Commission took up the subject at their meeting two days ago. The City Council also adopted a resolution on supporting neighborhood schools which seems to be a subject the school board and superintendent are undermining. Where is your reporting on this?
Zonemaven-
I was planning on putting up a post today about the Neighborhood Schools Coalition’s new blog this morning! Thanks for beating me to it and getting the URL out there. I’ll still get a post up shortly.
As far as the City Council resolution, we decided not to write about it, or the Bellingham school board’s response to it, because the city council has no jurisdiction over the Bellingham School District. They can pass all the resolutions they want about schools, but it affects nothing. There were blog posts about the resolution when it was happening.
As far as the controversies, I believe I’ve reported about the issues with Lowell and neighborhood schools pretty extensively this winter and spring. There have been several stories about both sides of the issue throughout the budget cut process. If you’d like to locate them, you can search for “Lowell” on the Bellingham Herald Web site or the Bellingham Public Library’s newspaper archive.
-Kira Millage
Education reporter
Glad to year you are about to give the Coalition some well-deserved publicity.
It remains that my blog comment above, posted by me three days ago, was not moderated until this morning but curiously bears the date at time that I wrote it last Friday. Blog postings and their comments are rather perishable products and tend to disappear from the public eye and interest in short order. Readers of your blog did not see my comment for almost three days but the historical record (the date/time stamp of your blog system) makes it seem that the comment was readily available last Friday. This may not be that big of an issue in this case, however, timing of comments on some contentious issues can have significant importance.
It is aberrant that the School Board’s actions can work to undermine a mandate that the city has to maintain the character and quality of our neighborhoods. This needs to be addressed.
Zonemaven-
I do not check the blog when I’m not working (usually) and our blog software defaults to us having to “approve” comments. That is why the comment wasn’t approved until I returned to work this morning. I’ve been told this is a feature I can turn off, so I’m about to go find that box to uncheck.
As far as the city council’s resolution, the Bellingham School District covers a different area than the city council. The Bellingham School District isn’t confined to the city limits — think about Sudden Valley, Geneva, Alderwood, Tweed Twenty, etc. — and some people in the city limits are actually in the Meridian School District (Cordata area). In the same way the school board can’t pass resolutions about city rules and have any effect, the city council can’t pass rules for the school district. They are separate government agencies. This is why the resolution is something we haven’t covered, other than through the blogs.
-Kira Millage
Education reporter
Kira,
Just because the districts and jurisdictions are not the same between the COB and the School District doesn’t mean that the Herald shouldn’t cover the issue from all points of views.
During the Mayor’s Neighborhood Advisory Commission last week, Bellingham Neighborhoods voted unanimously to support existing neighborhood schools. It appears the only major group in the COB that hasn’t supported Neighborhood Schools is the School Board and the Superintendent. The Board and Superintendent have consistently over reacted during the budgeting process. They predicted dire circumstances; initiated the compilation of a massive list of cuts; and made decisions based on little on no data. Now that the data is in, the School District is facing an “unprecedented” (the Board’s words) shortfall, as it turns out, of 0.6% ($586,000) out of a $101,000,000 budget. Since they started their decision process before they really knew the extent of the crisis, the decisions are hard or impossible to withdraw because they have to save face. If they had waited until the data was in, then perhaps, Neighborhood School closures would never have been approved or added to the list of cost savings.
Another interesting fact in the School District’s Proposed 2009-2010 Budget, is that school enrollment has been virtually flat for the past decade. According to the Budget Report, in 2000 the overall enrollment was 9,651 versus 9969 for the coming year. That’s an 18 student increase over 9 years. With that type of enrollment growth there doesn’t seem to be a need for building new schools but I understand there are plans to build new schools at the edges of the city and beyond. With government revenues so low due to the economic crisis and local tax hikes looming, it seems it would be prudent to stop spending on those projects and put money into keeping neighborhood schools open.
Ray Ballweg
Ray-
As I’ve said, we’ve been covering the resolutions, but only on the blogs. The debate about neighborhood schools has been in the paper numerous times, and we put out the information about the Neighborhood Schools Coalition meeting.
Part of the budget cut crunch is that while the district may only have .6 percent less revenue, much of the money has VERY specific rules as to how it can be used. All the federal stimulus funding — which is about $4 million — has strings attached and can only be used for various things. And many of those “strings” and “rules” are changing even now, making the budgeting process even more complicated.
When the budgeting process started, the outlook for all school districts was looking dire, especially because the stimulus funding hadn’t been OK’d at that point. In all, the district is spending about $2.5 million less this coming school year. Last school year, the district was budgeted to spend about $1 million extra than revenue by dipping into the reserves. Some of the difference between revenue and expenditures for this school year is being put back into the reserve fund to offset potentially more budget cuts next year.
District officials had to identify possible budget cuts before the middle of May due to contract rules that require teachers to be notified about employment for the next year. I thought starting the discussion early and identifying the potential areas to cut was a smart move, personally. If the district waited until the spring to talk about any of this, many people would have been upset about them waiting so long. At least this way people have had time to plan — it’s been very public and it’s allowed for many community discussions. Yes, district officials planned for the worst-case scenario. But, would you rather have that or officials planning for very little cuts and then getting caught off guard and having to make quick decisions. (This was their thinking, told to me numerous times in various forms)
As far as enrollment and building new schools, the Aldrich Road elementary school project hasn’t started, at least partly because there is less of a need for it right now. It was slated to have started over a year ago, but it never did. That project was approved by voters in 2006, so the bond funding will be used on the site eventually (must by law), but the money is sitting untouched until a new timeline is developed. As I recall, the city was in a boom during 2006 and enrollment projections showed huge increases. That’s probably why the bond issue passed by a large margin. Construction started on Wade King Elementary School, then the recession happened and local population growth plummeted. But capital projects funding (which is what bonds are) can’t be used for the general day-to-day operation of the district (which includes keeping schools open). This is a state law and nothing that the district can control.
-Kira Millage
education reporter
Ray,
Thanks for the clarification and expansion on the issue. It is evident that there should be some reconciliation process so that the jurisdictions do not work at cross purposes.
I would also submit that if the school district is only obligated to keep a minimum 3% in reserves, then what is the reason for which it is keeping more than 4%, especially in this time of need. The Superintendent and the board might well follow the lead of International Baccalaureate Program which the Superintendent is pushing here. From the IB website “The IB actively uses its resources and does not maintain large reserves. ” On this subject, see the comment on today’s Herald article entitled “Bellingham Schools propose $100 million budget (http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/957612.html) by mshapiro.
Zonemaven-
To clarify your reserve point, the district is required, by board policy, to keep 3 to 5 percent of expenditures in reserves. The state guideline is to keep 5 to 7 percent in reserves.
-Kira Millage
education reporter
I would also like to clarify, that there has been only one community discussion on the topic of school funding, and it was hosted by Citizens Forum. Every school “event” was a speech by the superintendent, with no questions or comment allowed from the public.
Comment was only accepted in writing (most of it was anonymous) which made it impossible for the community to have any discourse, with each other or with the district or school board. Communication has been one way.
That was the beginning of the problem.
Also, a big reason the bond passed in 2006 was because the school district promised to repair and continue to use its existing neighborhood schools: Columbia, Larrabee, Lowell, Whatcom Middle.
A previous bond to tear down Bellingham High and build a new one, failed; it was followed up by a bond to retrofit the existing building, that passed.
This is what Bellingham values. The school district is a “business” operating within the city limits. It has an obligation to work with co-existing government entities, and to support the values of the city it serves.
– Melissa Schapiro
Neighborhood Schools Coalition
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