Keep supporting schools
Published 5:38 pm Thursday, January 28, 2010
In my first six months in Bremerton, I have found this community to be tremendously supportive of students and families. People in Bremerton care deeply about the education children are receiving and remain very proud of Bremerton’s history wanting to see past successes return or remain as much as possible.
I am optimistic about our immediate and long-term future in light of financial challenges the district is facing. When we compound the issue of declining enrollment and budget reductions at the state and federal levels, it places large obstacles ahead of us in funding our basic needs.
In the early 1960s, school levies accounted for approximately five percent of the revenue available to schools. Historically, the state would pay the cost of what is essential for basic education and local levy dollars would supplement those needs with local tax dollars.
Currently, local levies account for 20.6 percent of the Bremerton School District’s overall budget. Unfortunately, the state level of funding (as a percentage) has not kept up, forcing us to stretch an already tight budget even more just to meet basic educational needs.
All districts are challenged in trying to meet state and federal guidelines despite no increase in resources to do so. These unfunded and underfunded mandates often require us to set aside money, limiting our ability to use funds where we feel they are instructionally needed most. Some unfunded mandates include the cost of certificated and classified substitutes, school counselors, state-wide assessments (formerly known as the WASL), annual state and federal audits, individual program audits, vision and hearing screenings, state and federal student data reporting, staff annual training and inspections (OSHA), elections, Hepatitis B inoculations and blood-born pathogen training to name a few.
We will need to be creative and fiscally responsible with our resources to figure out how we can continue to offer a great education for students and support our families by remaining student-focused. I am confident that, with our best thinking, collectively we will rise to the occasion and find a way to continue to offer a quality education for every student everyday.
The author of this letter, Flip Herndon, is superintendent of the Bremerton School District.
