By DAVID TELLER and CARA LORELLO
Staff Reporters
The Cheney School District board of directors held an emergency meeting Nov. 28 to re-certify their 2009 general fund maintenance and operations levy after being notified by the state Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction (OSPI) that it was reducing the district's Levy Equalization Assistance (LEA) by 3.4 percent in the wake of a $5.1 billion state budget deficit.
During the special meeting, the board unanimously approved resending a resolution to adjust the levy rollback that was just passed at the Nov. 19 school board meeting and approved the new rollback amount. Had the emergency resolution not been approved by the Nov. 30 deadline, the district stood to lose $ 42,835.
Cheney School District finance director Brian Aiken said this is the first time the state has done anything like this.
“It's unprecedented,” Aiken said of the rollback. “That just speaks to the level of challenges they face.”
LEA is allocated to schools based on property values to balance the amount of funding to the school districts. Since Cheney started receiving LEAs, levy rates in the district have dropped substantially. Aiken said the levy rates Cheney residents used to pay was nearly $4 per $1,000 of assessed value. He said those numbers are now down in the $2.50 range.
“A lot of that is due to equalization assistance,” Aiken said.
The cuts may not stop there. He said anything outside the basic education formula, like the K-4 enhancement ratio, other LEA's, Initiative 728, and the cost of living allowances (COLA) are being talked about by the state. He said the state will likely discuss it all through the winter.
“We'll know by May or June about what we're looking at for the 2009-2010 school year,” Aiken said.
Cheney taxpayers would feel the effect of the rollback. Aiken said CSD would shift 2 cents per $1,000 of assessed value back on to the levy. Because the school year is begun, the budget reductions are limited.
“Halfway through the school year we can't affect programs because we're already committed to staff them,” Aiken said.
The rollback resolution passed last month was to reduce the 2009 excess tax levy for the general fund by $392,286. In a letter from the superintendent of public instruction, Terry Bergeson said Gov. Christine Gregiore directed OSPI to cut LEA funding by $8 million and districts receiving LEAs must certify their new levy amount by Nov. 30. The letter was sent out on the Nov. 25, just before Thanksgiving weekend, which is when the school board had to put together the special meeting.
News of the state's cuts to levy equalization didn't create the same situation for Medical Lake School District, which unlike some bigger school districts, ran its levy amount below the maximum rate. District financial director Don Johnson said on Monday that school officials didn't have to hold any special meetings last Friday to reallocate funding for this reason.
The district typically runs its levies below the allowed max, because the city's tax base is so small, with the military base and state hospitals not being included on the state tax rolls, Johnson explained.
The district's recently approved maintenance and operations levy will still collect the full amount for 2009, but the state's 3 percent cuts to the equalization part, Johnson added, still comes as a direct hit for the district.
“We'll loose the money, but we can't change our levy at this time,” Johnson said, who estimates the district will be getting about $47,500 less from the state with the 3 percent cut.
David Teller can be reached at [email protected]
Cara Lorello can be reached at [email protected]
Reader Comments(0)