Olympia school district budget is ‘iterative’ and not static, always being refined

“I want to remind people about the iterative process of the budget, and that it is not static– it is moving,” Superintendent Patrick Murphy said concerning the district’s measures on budget cuts, during an Olympia School District work session last Thursday, June 1.

(Iterative: a development strategy that involves a cyclical process of refining or tweaking the latest version of a process to make a subsequent version.)

“There is an opportunity for some knowledge building for people about how the whole budget process works. This isn’t the budget,” Murphy explained. “This is a reduction. The budget comes later.”

The district’s adoption of a Reduced Educational Plan for the current school year is a process that had been going on for months, and it recently took a turn after they reported a large improvement from the April deficit estimate.

“I just want to do a quick overview of the budget adoption and what that is,” Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Priddy said. “It is essentially the Board authorizing the superintendent and administration to expand the resources, and it sets the limits on what can be expanded in the upcoming school year.”

Priddy explained that the reduced educational plan also identifies the spending plan associated with the revenue assumptions and identifies the OSD’s compliance with the ending fund balance policy, which requires the ending balance to be between three to seven percent.

“Ultimately, it also is a document that gives us authority to assume that we will be charging fees for services, for example, to rent out our performing arts center to the public,” Priddy added.

The budget adoption would entail the following:

• Giving authorization to the Superintendent (Administration) to expend resources and set the limit.
• Identifying a spending plan, associated revenue assumptions, and compliance with Policy 6022 [Ending Fund Balance (EFB) 3% to 7%].
• Re-introducing the fee schedule, which started during the pandemic.
• Updating breakfast and lunch minimum costs according to the USDA cost tool.
• Assessing/approving that revenue assumptions will support the spending authorization.

Several factors impact budget reductions, with the drop in enrolment being the most influential.

The district laid out a timeline for the meetings, community forums, and deadlines.

Enrollment and other resource drivers

Priddy reported the current state of the district’s fund sources, “Enrollment has not rebounded to pre-pandemic pandemic levy levels.”

The report also showed that the McCleary legislation of 2018 has constrained the levy funds of OSD.

The legislation was enacted after the court ruled that the state constitution requires the state to pay for all basic education costs, instead of each school district’s local levy dollars.

“Items one and two have been masked by pandemic stabilization funds, and these funds are expiring, and then you layer on top of that, the inflation that we are experiencing, and then layer on top of that, the fact that all of our grants that we receive are impacted by all of those factors also,” Priddy shared.

The session also presented the timeline for the adoption of the plan:

• Thursday, June 8 - Regular Board Meeting - 1st Reading
• Wednesday, June 14, 5 - 5:30 p.m. - Public Hearing
• Wednesday, June 14, 6 - 7 p.m. - Community Forum
• Thursday, June 22 - Regular Board Meeting - 2nd Reading
• July 1 - Education Service District begins review/sign-off of Budget
• August 31 - Due date for Superintendent to submit the budget to OSPI