r/camaswashington • u/Fake_Eleanor • 15d ago
Community weighs in on Camas School District’s looming budget cuts
https://www.camaspostrecord.com/news/2024/dec/19/community-weighs-in-on-looming-camas-school-district-budget-cuts/5
u/SweetAlternative2593 15d ago
I would like to see an analysis of why so many are pulling their kids from the district.
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u/camasparent123 14d ago
It's actually lower enrollment at the lower grades, believed to be predominately caused by fewer younger families being able to afford to move to Camas when homes turnover due to the dramatic increase in home prices here.
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u/VSbikedude 15d ago
Every school levy that comes to vote gets passed no matter how big. Teachers got a big pay bump for the next 2 years. Enrollment is down. Sounds like the reduction in labor is needed now and not later. Maybe start with admins. I am curious what “adequate funding” means? What is the number?, I’m sure they have it but don’t want to say because it reduces their chances of getting more levies passed later. I have a feeling the money is there and could be enough but they kept up the spending like this town is growing as it always has, which it sounds like it is not. Budget cuts are not fun and I feel for the people who will loose their jobs, I just hope we don’t hear the tired old line that we need more money for the kids.
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u/rexatron_games 14d ago edited 14d ago
I agree with the feeling that the money is there when we’re talking about the larger end of Anzalone’s percentages. The 15% has got to be a worst case scenario / there to scare the unions into taking lower COLAs. However, if you look at how the state has funded education post 2020, there has been a noticeable decrease in buying power.
Technically, budgets were not cut. But there are a number of things that have led to this lower availability of funds: 1) Some funding from federal covid relief was used to replace state funding. When the federal funding dried up, the state did not return to the previous model. 2) Inflation has outpaced increases in funding provided to schools, in spite of higher revenue at the state level, to the tune of about 1-2% each year. 3) Post-mccleary Camas’s regionalization factor was somewhere around 10% (i can’t recall the exact number) but was set to phase down to its current amount in 2022. This number was not based on any specific metric within the city and was set in stone regardless of what cost of living in camas did. Cost of living in Camas has increased, yet our regionalization factor still sits at the metric they decided nearly 10 years ago. 4) In the past, budgets shortfalls due to poor regionalization calculations could have been remedied by levy stopgaps, but McCleary kneecapped the district’s ability to use levies as well. Combine that with the district not wanting to ask for the maximum allowed levy amount (which generally looks bad and eliminates the option in the future) and you have yet another reason for the shortfall. 5) When teacher contracts were negotiated around 10 (i think?) years ago, the district demanded a cola inflation calculation metric that is generally lower than the one provided by the state. The union ended up agreeing to this metric. However, 2 years ago when negotiations were taking place, this metric was significantly higher than the state provided adjustment. The teachers’ union felt that the original agreement should have been honored, and the district wanted to move to the metric the teachers’ union wanted 10 years previous. You can see both points of view: one stating that the district didn’t seem all that upset when the metric was off in their favor; the other saying that the district (under completely different leadership) made a mistake in demanding the other metric. They ended up splitting the difference, and didn’t agree on either metric, but instead agreed to come back to the table in 2 years. While the district’s initial proposal would have only put a 1-2% dent in this round of budget cuts, in comparison to what ended up being agreed upon, it isn’t an insignificant number all things considered. 1-2% in a $120m budget is 2 million dollars. 6) Families in camas tend to stay in camas, when students age out. So, there isn’t the normal turnover that you see in other districts; thus the lower enrollment at the lower grades. Still, there are several developments on the horizon (including the massive north-shore development plan) that throw a wrench into this - making it incredibly difficult to plan for the future. 7) Discovery High has been a money pit. While CHS, Hayes, and CCA are all funded WELL above the teacher-to-student ratio (meaning we are at a budget surplus in those schools), Discovery operates at almost double what is allotted by the state per-student. The problem is, you can’t just shut Discovery down, because A) it’s home to about 600 students and the other high schools don’t have the capacity to physically fit them and B) the physical building itself is not adequately laid out for a traditional school environment (plus there’s the issue of it being a nontraditional high school and the students attending would have a more difficult time transitioning to the standard model - that’s less of a money thing and just a SEL thing, though). The district has been dragging their feet on solving this problem, because it seems without solution, and now they can no longer ignore the issue.
If only one or two of these issues had happened, the district could probably have gone by just fine without a major RIF and simply not re-hiring retired positions. But, at the moment, it’s a bit of a perfect storm of factors. That isn’t to say our district hasn’t done extremely well given these factors. Believe it or not, but we’re in a much better position than many other districts in our state.
The thing is; while the Discovery and teacher COLA problems can be solved at the district level by switching to the more stable metric and making a solid plan for a restructuring of the Discovery model, the rest of the issues are literally out of our hands. Other districts in the state are taking out loans to meet their shortfalls; and that’s something our district (rightfully) doesn’t want to do. This means major labor cuts and much higher class sizes if the state doesn’t step in. The other issues could quite easily be solved at the state level by doing things like taking funds from things like the prison system (which have significantly been expanded in the last few years) and giving them back to the schools; or fixing regionalization (among other things). Suggestions have been made about increasing taxes to make up the shortfalls, but I actually don’t think that’s necessary (it’s just that legislators don’t want to lose all their little pet projects).
Contact your local legislators and urge them to fix the problem: they have the power to do so.
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u/CornflowerBleu722 14d ago
Thank you for this information. Curious how many more students could Discovery theoretically take? It appears that the school has had a hard time recruiting for students. Anecdotally I know many families that had their children in Odyssey but the kids wanted to go to CHS instead of Discovery.
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u/Fake_Eleanor 14d ago edited 14d ago
Discovery High has been a money pit. While CHS, Hayes, and CCA are all funded WELL above the teacher-to-student ratio (meaning we are at a budget surplus in those schools), Discovery operates at almost double what is allotted by the state per-student.
It's not the only reason that Discovery has been struggling, and it may not even be the biggest reason, but the PBL schools were hit hard by Covid at a really bad time for them. Remote learning that no one was at all prepared for was hard for everyone, but especially hard for a new campus promoting hands-on, collaborative learning.
The funding problem might exist regardless if the school had had deeper roots — after a huge wait list early on, getting kids to come has been a struggle — but that was a damaging blow at a bad time.
(I say this as a Discovery parent, with kids who love the school and would consider CHS their last choice of available options.)
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u/rexatron_games 14d ago
Yeah, discovery is a bit of a sad story. It was such a good idea but has constantly struggled to find its footing.
Theoretically it should at least be on par with the cost to run a traditional school, but costs just ballooned and there’s never been a good solution for how to fix it.
My contacts at ZAC are pretty tight lipped right now, but I spoke to a buddy there who was basically on the verge of tears about it. He was saying how much it just sucks because he cares so much about all the teachers and how much they’ve worked to get the positions and pay they’ve finally gotten.
I’d brace yourself for a late January/early February announcement that Discovery is closing, with details of how those students and staff will be distributed coming later (CHS will be packed, even worse than it was in 17/18 - and they miiight need to add some more portables? I honestly have no good guess for how it’ll be done). Probably a reduction of 2 teachers in each department at the high school level, and 2 teachers at each school in k-8, as well as 1 admin per school. Hayes and CCA will probably be least impacted. DO has already been cut quite a bit, but we’re likely to see a few cuts there. They’ve already announced the closure of the print shop. I imagine teacher-librarians and full time nurses in k-8 are also on the table. And they’ll probably ask teachers to forgo a cola (like in 2008/9) pending legislation. Just my (un)educated guess.
Now, none of that will be set in stone, however. The district needs to move forward like this assuming the budget remains the same. But should the legislature fulfill their legal obligation to fully fund education, probably in March/April, a lot of these things can and probably will be backtracked. Fingers crossed and contact your representatives. I’m actually shocked the legislature didn’t do it last year, but at this point our states education shortfall can no longer be ignored. Guess it takes a crisis before anyone wants to act.
Yes, February and March are going to suuuuuck. But perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m remaining positive.
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u/Fake_Eleanor 14d ago
Honestly expected to hear plans to shut down after enrollment numbers came in last spring, so it’s always been on our minds as a possibility. Given the financial situation, I would not at all be surprised.
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u/rexatron_games 15d ago
It’s always interesting that we’re in a budget crisis when they’re negotiating contracts.
Still, this is a very real issue and it’s 100% caused by Olympia. In the last 4 years they’ve decreased the per-student education funding by somewhere between 5-8% depending on how you calculate inflation. Between that and the messed up way they calculate regionalization (I recall hearing certain metrics they use to calculate takes the prices of things as far away as goldendale) you basically have our current budget.
Your elected officials can fix this. Contact and urge them to do so.
http://paulharris.houserepublicans.wa.gov/
https://kevinwaters.houserepublicans.wa.gov/
https://electstuebe.com/