The Olympia School District (OSD) Board reviewed its 2024-2025 budget development calendar and its corresponding milestones at a work session last night with board members listening to the staff report related to the budget calendar and survey.
“The beginning of the calendar year marks the beginning of the legislative session. It's also when we started doing some intensive work and repair our budget that's going to be approved by the board sometime around June,” explained Superintendent Patrick Murphy.
OSD Executive Director of Business and Capital Projects Kate Davis presented the working draft of the district’s budget development calendar for the next school year.
For this month, the board is set to hold its first day of legislative session on Monday, January 8.
“We will spend the next few weeks fleshing out our enrollment projections… When we're projecting enrollment, we're projecting an annual average…and that's how we are funded. It’s also how we staff,” explained Davis.
Staffing projections will be focused on February, along with maintenance-level budget projections. The budget survey will also open to the public on February 15.
In March, the board will review budget cut options along with school closure saving items and meet with each school to review staffing plans and master schedules. The survey will close on March 15.
“The next week, the budget survey would close and we were looking at [a] potential special board meeting for that will be 90 days from the December 14 meeting,” said Davis.
The December meeting is the first day of the 90-day public comment period for school consolidation, a session attended by more than a hundred community members.
If school closure is decided, the board will have another meeting at the end of March so that changes be approved and adopted before April 15.
The 2024-2025 budget shall be revised by May 10, and the documents are expected to be posted for the public on June 7. The board will hold the first reading of the budget on June 13, and the second reading on June 27.
The final version of the budget is set to be submitted to the Educational Service District (ESD) on July 10.
OSD will survey to collect community, staff, family, and student input on the 2024-25 school year budget development. The survey revision is ongoing.
This 5-10 minute survey can be answered on or before 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 15, 2024. The survey results will be presented to the Board in March and April.
Results are anonymous, but the board encourages respondents to provide voluntary basic demographic information to map out who has participated.
Community members may access OSD’s budget web page to follow the latest updates.
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