Shoreline School District to Ask Voters to Support Supplemental Levy

The Shoreline School District plans to ask voters to support a $3.6 million supplemental levy, $1.2 million annually, for 2012-2014 to reduce class sizes and support programs affected by state budget cuts.

 The School Board will discuss the levy at its June 6 meeting and may decide to move forward.

 The levy would raise taxes by 15 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value and cost taxpayers about $60 a year for a home valued at $400,000.

 The following letter from Superintendent Sue Walker, was posted on the district’s Web site and sent to district families and residents last week.

 Shoreline, like all K-12 educational communities in the state, is deeply disappointed in the state budget approved by the Legislature on May 25, Superintendent Sue Walker wrote in a letter The impact of the funding cutsto Shoreline will be approximately $5.56 million annually

Included in these cuts is $4.2 million in voter approved I-728 dollars used for class-size reduction, professional development of staff and extended learning opportunities for struggling students. Another $800,000 in funding was cut in class-size reduction in grades K-4, funding which has been in place for more than 20 years. Finally, another $560,000 was reduced in employee compensation.

The impact of these reductions is only magnified by the loss of federal stimulus funds amounting to $1.5 million annually for special education and Title I programs. Our District is looking at approximately $7 million less revenue coming into Shoreline’s general fund for each of the next two years. In addition, the state has raised the retirement and health care costs to the District by approximately $860,000 over the next two years. The District’s reserves are healthy, but certainly not adequate to weather this financial storm for two more years.

Even after having to supplement K-4 class size funding by using $600,000 in reserve funds this year, the District believes that it can sustain the current class size model next year as well. However, by 2012-13 more revenue will be required.

The one remaining funding source currently untapped in our educational community is the additional capacity in the maintenance and operations levy authorized by the state last year. It is estimated that we would be able to collect approximately $1.2 million more of local revenue in 2012 to 2014 if voters approved a supplemental levy in November 2011. Current estimates suggest that such a measure would increase rates by 15 cents per $1,000 of assessed value or about $60 a year for a home valued at $400,000.

The Shoreline School Board plans to consider this option at its regular meeting on June 6. Our neighboring districts of Edmonds, Northshore and Seattle are already collecting that additional levy capacity. We believe that our community has the right to choose this option as well.