The Olympia School District (OSD) approved the $231,814,310 Administration Budget Proposal for School Year 2023-24 during a regular board meeting on June 22.
Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Jennifer Priddy presented the second reading of the proposal to the board for approval.“The adoption of our ‘23-’24 school year budget authorizes the superintendent and administration to expand resources. It essentially sets the limit of what can be spent,” said Priddy.
Priddy presented Resolution No. 649, the adoption of the 2023-24 school year budget, which was also presented during the first reading on June 8, which had a sum of $230,627,029.
The document presented for the second reading on June 22 contained the following breakdown:
These budgets combined add up to $231,814,310.
Compared to the first reading, the increase of almost $1.2 million came from changes to the General Fund Appropriation (Operating); and Debt Service Fund Appropriation (including interest).
The newest budget enabled the district to rehire 43 of the 45 certificated staff that had received non-renewal notices earlier this year. “The district has also been working hard to place as many classified (support) staff as possible from the original 55 projected in spring for layoff. To date, all but 14 have been employed,” district communications director Susan Gifford told The JOLT.
“I am happy to report that the overwhelming majority [of] staff that were non-renewed or not have a position – that we've been able to place almost all of those back,” said Superintendent Patrick Murphy.
Murphy reported that several educators and staff were rehired in the middle of the reduced budget decisions, and this development brought back the ideal teacher-student ratio in schools.
“We've also taken the Board's direction to whenever we have extra money, like we did at the end of the legislative session, to immediately put back into our schools. We've basically added back staffing at our schools that return them to the same teacher-student ratio that was in existence before,” Murphy added.
Murphy also thanked the people who worked on the budget, “I just want to say a big thank you to the board, members of our community, [and] our staff. Their input, contributions, understanding, stress that they've had to go through. This has been an incredibly challenging and difficult year for us.”
On June 14, the board had a public hearing to receive comments about the district's Administration Budget Proposal, and a community forum followed.
The next step for the budget is the Education Service District review and sign-off on July 10.
The Office of the State Auditor issued its annual audit of the district for the year ended August 31, 2022 and found no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in its financial statements or internal controls over spending federal funds.
The auditor’s office did determine that “internal controls were inadequate for ensuring compliance with federal Title I requirements for eligibility and assessment system security,” but also stated that “Due to the timing of [an earlier] recommendation, the District was not able to correct the issues identified for the current audit.” The report made two specific recommendations to the district and included the district’s acceptance of these.
The district provided a statement to The JOLT that reads, “We are pleased that we have a favorable audit outcome. We appreciate the opportunity to have our processes and our expenditures reviewed by experts; in the process, we continue to learn and improve even further.”
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