Local school officials are watching warily as the governor’s worst-case-scenario state budget proposal targets funding that helps keep class sizes manageable.
“I don’t think anybody is panicking,” said Franklin Pierce Schools Superintendent Frank Hewins. “But we’re not happy.”
If the state budget were adopted without changes, his Parkland and Tacoma-area district could, in the next school year, lose more than $800,000 that pays to hire teachers in kindergarten through fourth grade.
Also at risk would be more than $700,000 from another state program that helps pay for Franklin Pierce teacher salaries, training and other needs.
Those cuts would represent the equivalent of about 22 teaching positions, Hewins estimates.
In some of the area’s other large school districts:
• The Tacoma School District estimates it would lose $4.1 million in K-4 class size dollars and about $3.6 million in voter-approved funding in the 2010-11 school year under the governor’s proposal.
• The Puyallup School District would lose a total of about $8.8 million in the next school year, according to state estimates. Those kinds of reductions would be “tough to swallow without decimating our program,” said Jay Reifel, Puyallup assistant superintendent.
Teachers around the area agree.
Carson Fayth, who teaches first grade at Midland Elementary School in Franklin Pierce, has 26 students in her classroom – already two more than the district would like.
Fewer teachers and larger classes due to funding cuts would mean less time for kids, she said.
“It’s harder to get to the kids who are struggling with certain concepts,” Fayth said.
Her colleague Sally Wheeler, who teaches third grade at Midland, has a class of 27.
“When you have more kids, everything takes longer,” Wheeler said. “Making copies, lining kids up – everything is magnified over time.”
Gov. Chris Gregoire’s supplemental budget unveiled Dec. 9 reduces a projected $2.6 billion state shortfall by making severe cuts to education, social and health services and other programs. But even Gregoire doesn’t support her first-draft plan.
“As required by law, it is balanced,” she said in a news conference. “For me, it is unjust.”
She wants a combination of new state revenue and increased local taxing authority to help plug some holes, and she will submit a new budget in January that restores some cuts.
She has proposed allowing school districts to temporarily increase the percentage of their budget they can collect from local levies.
The governor’s Dec. 9 budget targets funds that pay for added K-4 teaching positions, as well as the state student achievement program. Created by voters who approved Initiative 728 in 2000, that program funnels state dollars into hiring and professional development for teachers.
Statewide, schools could lose nearly $500 million in state education dollars during the 2010-11 school year, according to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn. That includes more than $133 million in K-4 staffing money, and more than $97 million in I-728 dollars.
Also threatened are state dollars that pay for all-day kindergarten, gifted education and extra support for school districts with lower-than-average property values.
Dorn said Gregoire presented a realistic look at what K-12 education spending will look like without new revenue sources.
“They took a serious look at what they could cut legally, and this is what they came up with,” he said.
Dorn and other educators say that extra money for K-4 staffing has been around so long that it’s all but embedded into basic education funding.
“It may be classified on their books as outside basic education, but it is virtually institutionalized in the funding system,” said Tacoma Public Schools Superintendent Art Jarvis.
Jarvis said he doesn’t believe the state will rely entirely on cuts to balance the 2010 budget.
“You have to look at the revenue side as well as cuts,” he said. “I think there will be a very serious conversation. But I don’t think education can walk away unscathed.”
Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635
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