Board Says No To M&O Levy For Staff

WAITSBURG - The Waits­burg School Board decided last Wednesday night it would not be running a maintenance and operations levy this school year to maintain current staffing lev­els, as was suggested.

Each school year, the school board adopts a list of goals it would like to carry out. Su­perintendent Dr. Carol Clarke said she shared the board's draft goals with the district staff members and it was suggested that the school board ask the taxpayers this school year to pay an extra tax to keep the cur­rent staff members employed at the district.

A total of 3.5 full-time equivalent teaching positions and 1.5 classified staff posi­tions were eliminated in 2011- 12 to help cover the district's deficit, caused by a decline in enrollment. At the July school board meeting, board members cautioned the community that more cuts may be made this year.

School Board President Ross Hamann said if the board added a levy for staffing to the goals for the school year, the district and the board would have to act very soon to prepare all of the information and run a campaign.

"I don't know how we pull that off with the time frames that we have," Hamann said.

Karen Martin, the Walla Walla County auditor, said the deadlines have passed to put a levy on the ballot for the Gen­eral Election in November. To get a levy on the February bal­lot, the paperwork would need to be filed in December.

The last levy the district ran was Feb. 14. The district asked for and received a maintenance and operation levy of $435,000 and $447,000, or $3.62 and $3.72 per $1,000 assessed property value. It funds basic operations, programming and even personnel.

Hamann said the levies the district runs every two years to cover operating, technology and other day-to-day expenses require many separate planning meetings and lots of prepara­tion. And even if the board and the district could rush to action to get a levy on the ballot this school year, the student enroll­ment, which determines how much money the state gives the district for staff members, is fluid and changes often. This means the district wouldn't know how much money it would need to fund the current level of staffing.

"How much would you ask for?" Hamann asked. "We wouldn't know."

Board Member Greg Zuger said before the board could adopt a goal of running a levy to maintain staffing levels it would need to have a discus­sion with the community to see if the residents would support it. He also expressed concerns about the amount of money the district would be asking for.

"We don't know the future," Ziger said.

Hamann said he would be more comfortable with waiting until the next levy cycle in 2014 to look into ways the district could apportion some of the levy funding toward staffing levels.

The rest of the board mem­bers agreed with Hamann's idea and did not include a levy to support staffing in the board goals this school year.