by Michael Kundu

The Marysville School District is currently facing the most significant budget shortfall that we’ve seen in decades.

This year’s State budget deficit — combined with an unusual trend of declining student enrollment in Marysville — has created a scenerio where our district will be forced to reduce our $111 million dollar budget by as much as $6 million to $8 million, with somewhere between $2.4 million to $3.4 million dollars of those cuts coming from basic education (our day-to-day) operations.

In practical terms, this may mean that we could, in the worse case scenerio, lose up to 85 staff positions in 2009/2010, including teachers, custodians, vice-principals, groundskeepers, educational assistants, security, medical, and administrative support positions throughout the district. It may also mean that we may see increased class sizes, a decrease in program electives, the disappearence altogether of some services, and a 5 percent to 10 percent reduction in athletics, and in classroom supplies and materials.

In response to this crisis, we’ve had many of our dedicated employees and administrators graciously offer to waive annual pay increases, and even to voluntarily reduce their salaries. Accordingly, official travel has been significantly reduced, individual schools are downsizing their building expenditure budgets, and our finance department has established an advisory committee, including teachers, union representatives, and Marysville community members, to help formulate our budget reduction options.

Still, cuts are inevitable.

Now our task is to identify those cuts that have the least dramatic impact on student learning, our main priority. The school board will make some difficult, final decisions on which particular cuts and reductions will be needed in the end of this June.

For the last few decades, the State of Washington has continued to fail its Constitutional-mandated duty of adequately funding public education. Local districts count on receiving about 80 percent of their revenue directly from State funds; the balance is made up of local revenues, income, and other grants or sources. From this funding stream, districts each maintain their own budgets and balances.

This year, our district is predicting approximately a 2.2 percent unrestricted reserve fund at the end of the school year. The reserve fund represents that “rainy day money” that districts save to pay their bills on time, to cover unexpected costs, and to keep from going into ‘overdraft’ during times of the year when revenues take longer to come in, than when obligated payments are due.

It is broadly believed that a ‘“healthy” school district should have around a 5 percent reserve — while our reserve in Marysville has been slowly growing since 2003, we are still far from what we could consider a ‘healthy’ reserve fund. Now, unfortunately, it means we have even less flexibility with anticipated budget shortfalls.

It is also frustrating that some of our legislators appear to be reluctant to see the direct local implications of these cuts. I have personally invited each of them to come to the district to hear in person how our schools are being impacted by their spending priorities in Olympia, but to this date, only Representatives Mike Sells, John McCoy and Senator Steve Hobbs have expressed a willingness/availability to come and directly face constituents.

Ultimately, we all need to bear in mind that the Legislature holds the purse strings on public education. It is important to consider that your vote, as a constituent, determines who goes to Olympia to make such decisions for our students, and our community.

In Marysville, we’re fortunate that our schools are made up of a mosaic of vibrant, diverse population segments: Tulalip, Spanish, Russian, differentially-abled, transitional military, and many, many more distinct groups — each individual representing this valuable diversity is as important as the next, and our goal is to make any budget reductions equitable, so that no one group, school, classroom, or grade-level is more impacted than the collective.

While I try to remain optimistic about issues related to future budget forecasts and education, I have always personally felt that honesty and transparency is the right policy — even when that honesty involves bad news. While the district has built preliminary lists of reduction options, we are hopeful that supplemental federal funding, new revenues, voluntary retirements or a reversed trend in increased enrollments may make it possible for us to avoid or reverse many of these reductions, and allow us to maintain or recapture some of the programs and positions we stand to lose.

The bright side is that our district has some very talented people working on these matters, and in combining that with our genuine willingness to invite public input and opinion, I am confident that we will emerge out of this process with a fully functional, educational system – we may not look the same as we have in the past, but we will continue to do our best to protect our classrooms, and deliver the highest possible academic programs to all of our students.

Now I will invite each of you to contact us directly, to attend a future board meeting or special session dealing with final budget cuts (a calendar can be found at www.msvl.k12.wa.us), and to provide us input on what programs you think we should protect, and accordingly (to be much more helpful to us), where you believe we should focus our reductions.

Our district’s operations, ultimately, should function as a reflection of the aggregate values held by the greater Marysville community. In order to fully incorporate those values, we will depend on your input and involvement.

Michael Kundu is the board president of the Marysville School District, and encourages direct contact with him at michael_kundu@msvl.k12.wa.us Kundu works for the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA, and with his wife Nola, have two sons enrolled within the district.