Superintendents from Thurston County school districts met with the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) at a meeting on February 28 to share district updates.
“We don't have any particular agenda. Usually, we just give each one of the floor to talk about overview, challenge, something special you want the board to know,” started BoCC Chair and District 3 Commissioner Tye Menser.
Rainier School District Superintendent Bryon Bahr shared that they had just passed Educational Programs and Operations (EP&O) and capital levies alongside other districts.
“The thing I'm most excited about is that we just passed our EP&O levy and that we passed a capital levy. The EP&O is for maintenance and everything-- the normal four-year levy that we normally run, our capital levy is for student safety, school security, and maintenance upgrades,” said Bahr.
Rochester School District Superintendent Jennifer Bethman shared that they have “serious budget reductions” and are thankful for the 60% of the community who passed the levy.
“We reduced our budget by 3% last year, and we are reducing it by 5% this year,” said Bethman.
Menser also lauded the robotics and drone teams from the Rochester district. Rochester teams bagged all first five places in a regional robotics competition, and first three places in the drone competition.
North Thurston Public Schools Superintendent Debra Clemens talked about the capital levy it passed.
“That was a new tax that we were asking the community to support, and the key projects that are funded through the capital budget include safety upgrades at our schools, technology refresh …some facility improvements…and a big part of the capital levy was funding the preschool expansion,” shared Clemens.
Yelm Community Schools Superintendent Chris Woods shared that they are growing in population, but the voters did not pass the levy.
“You know, right now we are growing. We are about 200 students above where we were last year,” said Woods. “We did not pass our levy here recently, and our board last week approved a resolution to go out again [with a special election] on April 23.”
Woods said that they ran Yelm’s levy at $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed value and got about 47% approval, which was not enough to pass it. The board decided to decrease that to $2.25 per $1,000 of assessed value for the April resolution.
Tenino School District Superintendent Clinton Endicott shared that their enrollment is down but not significantly. Endicott also mentioned that they recently received a grant from the state's Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO).
“We apply for grants all the time, and one of the grants that we recently received was from RCO to help us create some additional public space,” shared Endicott. “We have a chunk of land…and so they're working with us to figure out how we can make that a usable playable field.”
Olympia School District Superintendent Patrick Murphy highlighted that the most recent graduating class of 2023 has a high graduation rate, and shared enrollment issues.
“We don’t want any child left behind as the law says,” said Murphy. “We have an enrollment problem, and we are having some really hard conversations.”
Tumwater School District Superintendent Kevin Bogatin said their district just passed their EP&O levy at about 58%, a little bit lower than their historical data.
“We have some growth…we're back to our enrollment where we ended last year, so kind of a steadying growth which is good to see. We're not talking about budget reduction, just got to talk about flat growth,” said Bogatin.
Aside from the BoCC and seven superintendents, Capital Region Educational Service District 113 Superintendent Lester “Flip” Herndon also attended the session.
1 comment on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
Tractor1
Where were, if any, comments from the Griffin School District? Or, were they even asked to participate?
Wednesday, March 6 Report this