Issaquah School District Budget Avoids Across-the-Board Class Size Increases and Teacher Job Cuts

The is starting the 2011-12 year with an approved General Fund of $161.6 million, no across-the-board increase in class sizes and no job cuts for teachers, administrators and a union official said.

At their Aug. 31 meeting, the five-member board of directors unanimously approved the budget, which started the next day. The vote and budget details come under a sobering reality – $4.3 million in cuts in state money for this academic year and the next one because of a shortfall in tax dollars. In April, the board even trimmed more than $2.7 million from the budget to prepare for a worst-case scenario.

But Issaquah officials said they made a concerted effort to put their resources for the academic year into the classroom, which meant using levy dollars and some reserves. “We do have a budget that will appropriately support the work that we’re going to do for our students and staff,” Superintendent Steve Rasmussen said.

“We’re very fortunate in the fiscal year 2011-12 budget that service levels, for the most part, will remain as they were in the prior year,” Jake Kuper, district budget chief, said after the vote.

But the balancing act for the school year, given less money, meant some cuts to support services, custodial maintenance and transportation.

Kuper noted that voters in the district, which serves residents in the southern part of Sammamish, approved a maintenance and operational levy in 2010. That levy support, specifically $3.5 million this academic year, is helping to boost services to students in the face of state cuts, he said.   

District officials also are reaching into reserve funds for about $1 million to $1.5 million to help fill in the dollar gap, Kuper added. District officials announced their gap-filling measures in May, which included an opportunity for teachers to earn back what would have been a salary cut. Directors formally approved the measures in the budget.

District budget documents show that revenue for the year is $158.6 million, while spending is $161.6 million. Regular instruction costs increased to $95.3 million for this school year, up from $89.7 million from the previous one.

At the meeting, the president of the Issaquah Education Association asked the board to use reserve dollars to reinstate an “overload” clause for teachers.

That means that specific classes this year might have a larger than expected number of students, Phyllis Runyon, who leads the teachers’ group, said. “We have some overloaded classrooms. That doesn’t benefit anybody,” she said after the vote.

At Beaver Lake Middle School, which is in Issaquah and close to the Sammamish border, 34 classes have more students than expected, she said.

If the “overload” clause was in effect, it would trigger some type of assistance for that teacher, such as another instructor, Runyon said. That clause is not in effect this year because it became moot when the district called for a reduction in force in April, she said.

Leaders were being prudent in budgeting at the time, given that figures from the state Legislature showed millions of dollars in cuts for districts in the state.

Runyon noted that while 36 teaching jobs could have ended, which the board approved earlier in 2011 in the worst-case budgeting scenario, 35 of those people are back this year at schools in the district. That one teacher found another job, she said.

The district also has hired about 93 new teachers for the year, she said. While Runyon had concerns about student crowding in specific classrooms, she seemed satisfied with the overall budget. 

“The district runs conservatively and that is great. It is a good budget. They’ve kept Issaquah in the black,” she said.

But directors and district officials are keeping an eye on the possibility of a mid-year cut in money from the state Legislature, given that forecasts continue to raise eyebrows among those who follow dollar sources.

Kuper said a mid-year cut is a real possibility and that district officials are anticipating a special legislative session in Olympia. But it remains unknown, at least as of now, whether such a session will take place.

For context, though, Kuper said at the peak, the state supported about 69 percent of the district’s total operating dollars. Now, that percentage has dropped to about 61. “That reduction of nearly 8 percent over the last three years is about $16 million year over year,” he said.

In other words, about 61 percent of the $158.6 million in incoming dollars comes from the state, according to district budget documents. The next largest source is the levy, which accounts for 22 percent of incoming dollars. In terms of spending, 61 percent of the $161.6 million goes to classroom spending. 

While the district’s levy is helping to support operations, Kuper added that Issaquah schools might not be able to enjoy an increase from that source in 2012-13, given the cyclical process. “We’re capped,” he said last week.

As board members talked about the possibility of mid-year dollar cuts last week, one remarked that the prospect of less public money might be a “new norm.”

Editor's note: The Issaquah School District has posted full budget information on its website.