Budget FAQ's part 1
How can I recommend an operational efficiency to bolster the district budget?
Please e-mail the Issaquah School District Business Department. Please be aware that we may not respond to every e-mail, although your input will be collected and considered during the budget process.
There is so much school construction happening—why doesn't the District use some of those funds to help pay salaries and operate schools?
Washington school districts receive money from the state and federal government according to a per-student formula to pay for daily operations: salaries, textbooks, utilities, student programs, and all classroom-associated expenses. Local taxpayers can expand on this basic allotment for operations by approving Maintenance and Operations (M&O) levies. School districts, however, receive limited state and currently no federal money to build schools or facilities. To do so, districts rely on voter approval of construction bonds, and the bond money must be used ONLY for construction purposes. Therefore, the Issaquah School District could never choose to offset any of the shortfalls in state education funding by shifting bond dollars to the operations budget. To put it another way, voters can always choose to build new schools or buy new buses, but the District may not receive enough money from the state and federal government to pay to operate them!
How many teaching positions does I-728 fund in the Issaquah School District?
80 teaching positions as well as 32,000 hours of certificated professional development.
If all of I-728 is eliminated from the state budget, will that mean the District will directly cut 80 teaching positions?
Many factors–such as employee attrition and retirement, cost savings and efficiencies in operations, and student growth–will mitigate the potential impact that a cut in I-728 will have on the Issaquah School District. However, because I-728 provides categorical dollars (specific dollars for a specific purpose), the District will have to directly scale back in the areas directly funded by I-728 if the state cuts are significant.
Why does it cost the District money if the Legislature approves a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for teachers?
Because the state only funds 70-percent of certificated staff positions and 38 percent of classified staff positions, the state never fully funds the true cost to fully implement a cost-of-living salary increase. In Issaquah, for fiscal year 2008-09 we had to divert $1.9 million of local levy money to fully implement the COLA. In 2008-09 terms, every 1-percent COLA the Legislature provides costs the district an estimated $425,000.
Budget FAQ's – part 2
How much does the state's final budget decrease funding to the Issaquah School District
$7.3 million-which is about $3.2 million less than our worst-case scenario when we established a RIF line in April.
Why did the Issaquah School District set the RIF line so early when conditions have obviously changed now that the state has a final budget?
The certificated employee contract stipulates that the School Board has until April 20 to tell the Issaquah Education Association (IEA) if/where it will establish a RIF line for the coming school year. This year, the District reached an agreement with the IEA to push that back two days to April 22. Even without that contractual clause, the District would have had to distribute RIF notices in advance of the final state budget: state law sets May 15 as the last day for school districts to hand out RIF notices.
So how is the District reconciling its 2009-2010 budget?
By making $2.2-million in reductions to non-classroom service levels (administrative positions; EA, maintenance, custodian, program assistant, and secretarial hours; etc.) and increasing class-size ratios by one student.
What does the one-student class-size ratio increase mean for certificated employees?
The single-student increase in class-size ratios results in 40 to 45 fewer certificated positions District-wide; because this approximates the number of teachers we generally lose each year due to attrition, retirement, and non-continuing contracts, we expect to recall most certificated employees who received a RIF notification.
Are the reductions to teachers (certificated employees) and other services equal?
No—non-teacher related reductions are impacted at a slightly higher percentage. This is despite the fact that certificated employee salaries and benefits represent the majority of the District's operations budget (60 percent), and a large portion of the state's revenue cuts were made in the areas of I-728 and class-size enhancements (teacher positions). The District identified $2.2 million worth of off-setting cuts to support services as the baseline for reductions next school year-that represents a 5 percent decrease in funding in these service areas. The one-student class-size ratio increase represents a 4 percent decrease in funding in certificated employee salaries and benefits.
What are next year's target class size ratios (and this year's actual District-wide average)?
| Grade span |
2009-2010 class size ratio |
2008-2009 actual average |
| Kindergarten through 2nd grade |
18 to 24 students/1 teacher |
19.3 students |
| 3rd through 5th grade |
22 to 28 students/1 teacher |
23.46 students |
| 6th through 8th grade |
26 students/1 teacher |
25 students (staffing level) |
| 9th through 12th grade |
27 students/1 teacher |
26 students (staffing level) |
Will the one-student increase in the class-size ratio be very noticeable?
District-wide, class sizes will increase. Because actual class sizes are based on many factors, the one-student-ratio increase may or may not be distinguishable at a class or building level. Class-size ratios always come with an acceptable range, and it is extremely challenging to manage the splitting point in class sections because students never come in neat ratio packages at each building. Additionally, principals have the latitude to work with their teacher teams to implement best instructional decisions. For instance, they may increase class ratios at one grade level in order to create staff time for a targeted, pull-out reading program; or they may increase the number of students in an elective class to lower class size in a more challenging core subject.
Does building size dictate class size?
No. Class-size ratios are the same District-wide. In fact, buildings with larger student populations sometimes have an easier time evenly creating classes that fit into the targeted ratio. If a school increases or decreases significantly in student population, the District-wide class-size ratio dictates the number of teachers and class sections-not facility space. The size of the building does generate extra support in terms of educational assistant hours for supervision purposes, program assistant hours, etc.
Why are Issaquah's class sizes among the lowest in the state?
The state identified several uses for I-728 dollars, including professional development and training. In Issaquah, we have put almost all of our I-728 funding directly into class size reductions while other districts have chosen other uses.
Does the number of staff members RIF'ed per building determine class size?
No. Per the certificated employee contract, we RIF'ed teachers District-wide based strictly on seniority. We will recall RIF'ed teachers to positions that are open and available based on the District-wide class-size ratio. So if one building has been hit disproportionally hard with RIF notices, we will use the assignment/transfer process (which includes recall) to staff each school appropriately and equitably.
Does the District have a recall "line" now that we have a reconciled budget?
No. The reconciled District budget has provided a new class-size ratio, which tells us about how many teaching positions we anticipate system-wide. Just like every school year, it will take principals working with their schedules and student enrollment numbers to determine the actual number of teaching positions available in each school. As positions become available, we will recall down the RIF list based on endorsement and seniority. Although we hope to recall many teachers by the end of the school year, the process could last through the summer as principals make final tweaks in their schedules and assignments.
How else are you increasing efficiencies?
We have a dedicated Resource Conservation Manager that constantly looks for efficiencies-in fact, the District in April won King County's most prestigious environmental award, the Green Globe, for these efforts. Over the past several years, we have saved about $3 million on energy use alone. We have decreased energy use by 6 percent, even while new-building square footage has increased by 15 percent. Our recycling rate has jumped from 30 to 50 percent. And we have reduced water consumption by 33 percent and irrigation by 20 percent. We do things like:
- Automatically shut down all computers at night ($70,000 per year savings)
- Make sure vending machines only power on when in use ($12,000 per year savings)
- Program heat and AC to turn on only when the building is in use (24% savings in heat/AC costs)