Follow-up to Unintended Consequences of McCleary “Fix”

— from Tom Baldwin for the Orcas Island School District Budget Advisory Committee–

We have had several comments and questions from the opinion piece we submitted (see https://theorcasonian.com/McClearyFix ) regarding the unintended consequences of the state’s intended fix for the McCleary decision. We will endeavor to respond to those questions here—

1. On February 15, we were asked why we were discussing funding issues for any location other than Orcas Island. In fact, we never intended to discuss finances for any location other than the Orcas Island School District. As it happens, HB 2242 has introduced a process called “regionalization” which is intended to augment salaries to compensate for differences in the cost of living in different areas of the state. This factor is based on the median single-family residential value of each school district and “proximate school district”, where the term “proximate” refers to areas within 15 miles of boundary. For islands such as Orcas, the expanse of water was ignored and we were combined for the determination of the median property values with the areas around Mount Vernon. Regionalization factors/enhancements are 6%, 12%, or 18%, with re-basing taking place in 2023-24. Orcas Island was given a regionalization factor of 1.12.

2. On February 17, we were told that the administrative and administrative support staff budgets of OISD have ballooned over the last 5 years.The writer urged the Budget Advisory Committee to step outside the box to get real information and data from outside the District office, stating that “In the past 5 years we have build an animal that the State has just informed us we can’t afford to keep.”

We have taken the suggestion that we look at budget information of OISD outside the district office, and have studied the budget numbers posted on the web site of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) for the state of Washington. The URL is https://www.k12.wa.us/safs/data/reportformatter.asp.

We learned that between the 2013-14 academic year and the 2016-17 academic year, the Superintendent’s salary has increased by 3.5%. Note that the 3.5% increase is over a 4-year period, not 3.5% per year. The sum of the district office salaries, excluding superintendent and principal salaries, has increased by 10.3% over the same 4-year period, or an average of about 2.5% per year.

The principals’ salaries over the same period have increased by 21.9%, not because of increases per principal, but because of the addition of a half-time principal for the Oasis program. And finally, the teaching staff has seen an increase of 12.6% over the same 4-year period.

How one defines the cost of administrative and administrative support staff is a topic for discussion, but taking the suggestion that we look at information and data from outside the District office, we have studied the data posted on the OSPI web site, a site that is accessible to everyone, and we see no evidence of excessive increases in administrative costs at OISD over the past few years.

3. On February 18, we were asked whether we might petition the state to section us off as a separate county and not mixed with surrounding areas, and on February 19, we were asked if we might invite Senator Ranker to explain the situation to us. It is probably best to respond to these two questions together, as they both fall into the category of engaging with our elected representatives to learn not only what is happening, but why. As a member of the Budget Advisory Committee, I would welcome the opportunity to have such a discussion. I have called our Senator’s office.